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Taiwan
silent on report it TAIPEI, Dec 4: Taiwan’s Defence Ministry was silent today on a news report it was considering acquiring kidd-class guided......more Women eating much SYDNEY, Dec 4: Women who eat too much during pregnancy may be putting their children at risk of getting diabetes and developing heart .....more Beating the winter weather blues with a dose of lux HAMBURG, Dec 4:When rain, wind and cloud replace the sunshine and blue skies of autumn in northern Europe and the days..more Life on land is billion LONDON, Dec 4:Life on the land may be more than a billion years older than previously thought, say scientists after discovering organic matter in ancient rocks in South Africa. ...more |
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Military
Govt in Pak NEW DELHI, Dec 4: The military Government of Gen Pervez Musharraf has decided to make promotions and transfers of high Government officials....more
Bush team shoots TALLAHASSEE, Dec 4: A Florida judge was set to rule on Al Gore’s request for a recount of thousands of ballots that could determine the battle...more Experts say waking MUNICH, Dec 4: The German-based medical magazine "Aerztliche Praxis" claims waking up. ......more |
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Taiwan silent on report it may buy missile destroyers TAIPEI, Dec 4: Taiwan’s Defence Ministry was silent today on a news report it was considering acquiring kidd-class guided missile destroyers from the United States. Jane’s defence weekly reported last week that the plan signalled the island might be seeking an alternative to the aegis-equipped air-defence destroyers it had sought to acquire from the United States earlier this year. The United States in April deferred a decision to sell four destroyers equipped with the aegis battle system due to pressure from Taiwan’s rival China. Jane’s said the US Navy’s four kidd-class destroyers were commissioned in 1981 and 1982 and decommissioned in 1998 and 1999 after serving only half their service life. Washington sought to sell the four ships to greece in 1998 and to Australia in 1999 under a 500 - 700 million dollar five-year, interest-free, lease-to-own programme. Neither option was pursued. Taiwan’s Navy is not equipped with highly sophisticated destroyers now. A military spokeswoman declined to comment on the report, citing a long-standing policy not to comment on any reported arms purchases. Jane’s said the kidd-class destroyers could provide Taiwan’s Navy with a platform capable of simultaneously conducting anti-air, anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare. But whether the kidd-class platform on the destroyers could accommodate an aegis-type radar should be a major consideration, it added. Taiwan has been pushing to buy warships from the United States equipped with the sophisticated aegis command system that can track and shoot down multiple missiles in flight. Beijing, which views taiwan as a rebel province subject to eventual union with the mainland, by force if necessary, opposes any arms sales by the United States to the island. (REUTERS) |
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Women
eating much during pregnancy may SYDNEY, Dec 4: Women who eat too much during pregnancy may be putting their children at risk of getting diabetes and developing heart disease in later life, a study in Australia suggests. Research on pigs at Adelaide University has bolstered the theory that patterns of cardiovascular disease and diabetes are set before birth. Gynecologist Phil Owens maintains that the amount eaten by mothers at crucial stages of pregnancy determines the ability of their offspring to produce leptin. Leptin, a hormone that regulates appetite and fat, is secreted by fat cells into the blood and acts on the brain to control appetite and energy expenditure. Those who are obese or diabetic tend to have high levels of leptin. The Adelaide study showed that piglets whose mothers were fed more during pregnancy were about the same size at birth as those born to mothers on a regular diet, but by four weeks of age had crown much bigger and at ten weeks had significantly higher levels of leptin in their blood and a greater capacity to make leptin in their fat cells. "It looks like maternal nutrition and metabolism at the end of the first and beginning of the second trimester is a critical period for the foetus," Owens said. The study, presented at the 11th International Congress of Endocrinology in Sydney, is to be followed up with research into what pregnant women eat and how this affects the physical development of children fare up to the age of ten. (DPA) |
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Beating the winter weather blues with a dose of lux HAMBURG, Dec 4: When rain, wind and cloud replace the sunshine and blue skies of autumn in northern Europe and the days get shorter and darker many people find their spirits dwindling too. The lack of sunshine saps energy and leaves them feeling gloomy. Some say they feel as if they could sleep the whole day through. Doctors call this phenomenon S A D. or Seasonal Affective Disorder, otherwise known as the winter blues. A lack of sunlight leads to increased production of the hormone melatonin, reveals Professor Juergen Zulley, a specialist at the sleep disorders centre of the University of Regensburg, under normal circumstances the body produces large quantities of this hormone at night, when it’s dark. When light is in short supply during the day, levels of melatonin remain high. Scientists suspect melatonin is linked to bad moods. However, not everyone complaining of moodiness and not wanting to get out of bed in the morning is suffering from depression. To a certain extent, everybody is affected by the shortfall in sunlight, says Zulley, who maintains that only around two per cent of the population require treatment for their S A D women, he adds, are three times more likely to suffer from S A D as men, although the reason for this discrepancy is unclear. The transition from a seasonally affective case of the blues to a serious depression may be seamless, explains Zulley, nevertheless there are differences between the two. Less severely afflicted sufferers are merely inclined to sleep more they usually would, whereas the clinically depressed often suffer from Insomnia. Equally, while depressives tend to lose their appetite completely, S A D victims often report a craving for sweets. This explains the tendency of many of these people to put on weight, says Zulley. The Ruedenhausen General Practitioner Thomas Marx knows how hard it can be to distinguish those suffering from real depression, describing patients’ symptoms as diverse and not easy to explain. When making a diagnosis, marx tends to trust his instincts, honed by years of experience. ‘Depression’ is a tricky term, he warns, because people don’t want to be thought of as mentally ill. The doctor regularly prescribes rose of sharon for relief of the winter blues, a vegetable-based remedy with few side-effects. Juergen Zulley has for many years recommended a treatment entirely devoid of medicine which simply gives the patient what he lacks, i.e. light. I give my patients a special therapeutic lamp to use at home, he says. S A D sufferers bathe in the 10,000 lux-strong light for approximately 40 minutes every day. (a lux, or lumen per square metre, is the metric unit for measuring illuminance). For the best results, patients are advised to use the lamp in the mornings, immediately after getting out of bed. During the session, patients are free to read or eat breakfast. The only important thing is to make sure the light makes contact with the eyes, explains zulley. After just a few days, patients feel a lot better, he says. The lamp is entirely harmlss and can thus be used throughout the winter without fear of side-effects. Notwithstanding the success of his methods, Zulley encourages S A D sufferers to take advantage of natural light whenever they can. People who feel tired and worn out should make sure they get plenty of fresh air - even on overcast winter days, sunlight penetrates cloud at 1,500 lux, this compared to the 500 lux given off by average indoor lighting. American researchers from Duke University maintain the best defence against S A D is regular participation in sport. According to a study published in the September issue of ‘psychosomatic medicine’, sport is significantly more effective than anti-depressive medication in combating depression. (DPA) |
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Life on land is billion years older: Scientists LONDON, Dec 4: Life on the land may be more than a billion years older than previously thought, say scientists after discovering organic matter in ancient rocks in South Africa. Researchers found evidence that primitive life spread from the sea to the land between 2.6 and 2.7 billion years ago. Life is thought to have flourished in the oceans for the past 3.8 billion years, but to have lived on land for less than a third of that time. Until now the earliest undisputed signs of terrestrial life came from rocks from Arizona, in the United States believed to be 1.2 billion years old. Scientists believe that ancient rocks from South Africa may be the remnants of micro-organisms which colonized the land as long ago as 2.7 billion years, the magazine nature reported. Research was carried out by a team led by Yumiko Watanabe, from Pennsylvania State University. The primordial organic matter was found in Mpumalanga province in a geological region known as the black reef formation. Analysis showed that it contained tell-tale chemical signatures of life. Most, if not all, the bugs that made up the so-called microbial mats were probably capable of photosynthesis, said the scientists but without molecular evidence, it would be hard to identify the exact types of organisms, they wrote. (DPA) |
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Military Govt in Pak to make promotions NEW DELHI, Dec 4: The military Government of Gen Pervez Musharraf has decided to make promotions and transfers of high Government officials depending on the confidential reports of Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) according to a section of the Pakistani press. Urdu daily "Khabrain" of Lahore says that these agencies will keep track of the activities of Government officials of grade 17 to 22 within their offices and outside. Reports prepared on the basis of these activities will form an important part of the confidential report of every high official. On this will depend their promotions and transfers, the paper says. In case of an adverse report, an official who has put in 25 or more years of service will lose his job. Commenting on this report, "Khabrain" said bureaucrats had been pampered by different governments in the past. Bureaucrats, who happened to be close those in power, were given out of turn promotions. However, the present Government is putting an end to this tradition, the paper wrote. (UNI) |
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Bush team shoots down Gore contest, urges him to quit TALLAHASSEE, Dec 4: A Florida judge was set to rule on Al Gore’s request for a recount of thousands of ballots that could determine the battle for the White House, which George W Bush claims he has already won. Judge Sanders Sauls made the announcement late yesterday after a marathon second day of hearings in Gore’s contest of the November 7 Presidential election results in Florida. Sauls said he would present his decision in the morning, but did not set a time. The Bush team yesterday launched a concerted attack on the Vice President’s challenge, shooting down his petition for the recounts, and urging him to concede defeat. But Gore insisted the battle was far from over. He believes that a manual recount of more than 12,000 votes from Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties would give him a Florida victory and the keys to the White House. Attorneys for Bush systematically targeted every argument brought by democrats before the leon county circuit court in the Florida capital Tallahassee. In his closing arguments, Barry Richard said the Gore Camp had failed to demonstrate anything was wrong with the vote count that gave Bush a 537-vote lead in the southeastern state. "The burden is on the plaintiffs and they are light years from carry of that burden," he said. The Bush team then asked for the case to be thrown out. Gore lawyer David Boies delivered his own emphatic plea, saying it was imperative the court should tally votes he said were improperly rejected. "There are many hundreds, possibly thousands and that is more than enough to make a difference in this case," he said. He also scored points when one of the key witnesses for bush testified manual recounts in close elections were desirable. Should Sauls grant the request, Bush lawyers want him to order new tallies in two other counties, where they claim vote counters used arbitrary standards in counting ballots. Bush’s running mate Richard Cheney said Gore should simply give up. "I do think that it’s time for him to concede," he said in an interview with NBC. "I think history would regard him in a better light if he were to bring this to a close," Cheney added. Gore said he would not contest the final outcome once the courts in and Washington have ruled. "I will not question the fairness or legitimacy of the final outcome" he told CBS. But his top legal adviser, Warren Christopher, said gore would not throw the towel just yet. "It’s certainly far too early to concede with those three proceeding forward," he said in reference to Gore’s challenge of the elections and two other pending cases. The democrats were frantically battling to beat a December 12 deadline for the appointment of Florida’s slate to the electoral college that names the President. Republicans in the Florida legislature have warned that if the electors are not named in time, they could do the selection themselves. Since republicans dominate both the house and the senate, they would be sure to pick Bush supporters. (AFP) |
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Experts say waking at night is normal MUNICH, Dec 4: The German-based medical magazine "Aerztliche Praxis" claims waking up in the middle of the night is perfectly normal. The magazine published in Munich maintains that periods of wakefulness should only cause concern if, instead of going back to sleep, those finding themselves awake at night begin to fret. If falling asleep again proves difficult, experts recommend getting up for a short while to read a few pages of a good book or to listen to music. The magazine likewise emphasises the importance of waiting until one is really tired before going to bed. Relaxing leisure time may be reflected in a peaceful night and running through a checklist of things to do the next day can help when trying fall asleep. As a final tip, the authors note some people find they can fall asleep more quickly by lying back and recalling the events of the day in their mind. (DPA) |
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