Broken heart syndrome.

According to the British Heart Foundation, broken heart syndrome is a “temporary condition where your heart muscle becomes suddenly weakened or stunned.” The left ventricle also changes shape, which adds to the temporary dysfunction. The broken heart syndrome is triggered by acute, major stress or shock such as the death of a loved one,valuables, job or even pet. This sudden weakness of the heart is thought to be due to the sudden release of large quantities of adrenaline and other stress hormones. Adrenaline increases blood pressure and heart rate, and it may lead to narrowing of the arteries that supply blood to your heart, or even bind directly to heart cells allowing large amounts of calcium to enter and render the cells temporarily unable to function properly. The change of shape of the left ventricle can trigger a fatal heart attack,and having a history of neurological problems, such as seizure disorders, and/or a history of mental health problems raises the risk. The symptoms of broken heart syndrome are very similar to those of a heart attack, such as chest pain and shortness of breath,but the only difference is there's no actual damage to the heart to trigger it. Extreme shock or stress may also trigger a hemorrhagic stroke by causing a dramatic rise or change in blood pressure.

How Stress Influences Your Heart Attack and Stroke Risk.

Stress response is a lifesaving biological function that enables you to instinctively square-off against an assailant, for flight or fear. People who are highly stressed have higher activity in the amygdala. This in turn triggers arterial inflammation, which is a risk factor for heart disease, including heart attacks. However,living in today's modern world activates this same biological reaction in response to activities and events that have no life-threatening implications whatsoever, from speaking in public to filling out tax forms and sitting in traffic jams. The high number of stress-inducing situations we face on a daily basis can actually make it difficult to turn the stress response off, and marinating in corrosive stress hormones around the clock can have very serious consequences for your health, such as fat accumulation, high blood pressure and heart attack and many other health consequences associated with chronic stress. Acute stress can also have potentially lethal consequences. High stress also raises the level of disease-promoting white blood cells, and releases norepinephrine, which can cause dispersal of bacterial biofilms from arterial walls, thereby triggering a heart attack. According to recent research, stress increases your risk of heart attack and stroke by causing overactivity in the amygdala known as your brain’s fear center, this almond-shaped brain region, located in your temporal lobe, is activated in response to both real and perceived threats. Another recent research suggests the amygdala is also involved in the processing of other emotions, including positive ones, as well as the processing of emotional memories of all kinds. In a study, inflammation levels as well as brain and bone marrow activity of 293 participants were measured, all of the participants were over the age of 30, and none had a diagnosed heart problem. By the end of the observation period, which lasted between two and five years, 22 participants had experienced a serious cardiac event such as heart attack, stroke or angina (chest pain). Based on brain scans, the researchers were able to conclude that those with higher activity in the amygdala were at an elevated risk of a cardiac event. There appears to be a significant correlation between amygdala activity and arterial inflammation (which is a risk factor for heart attack and stroke). This was confirmed in another much smaller sub-study involving those with a history of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).Here, levels of C-reactive protein were also measured, showing that those reporting the highest stress levels also had the highest amygdala activity and higher levels of inflammatory markers.source

Seafood Eaters Ingest 11,000 Plastic Pieces A Year.

According to a new environmental study, every person who eats seafood ingests about 11,000 tiny plastic pieces per year. Today, the sea contains five thousand billion tiny plastic pieces that end up ingested by fish and seafood.The plastic has found a way inside our body because of the way we treat our oceans. The petrol-based ultra resistant material can never really disappear (until a couple of hundred years). Ingested by the marine wildlife, plastic finds its way up the food chain and ends up at our dinner tables. In a way, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the study confirms we eat thousands of tiny plastic pieces. The study from Ghent University in Belgium explains what happens to these tiny plastic pieces: 99% of them are absorbed by our but… 1% doesn’t leave it. What are the consequences? Well, scientists still do not have an answer about this worrying question. But one thing is certain: we eat a lot of plastic and all of it doesn’t come out.continue

Free sanitary pads and education.

The Kwazulu-Natal department of education is distributing free sanitary pads to girl learners who cannot afford to buy them as part of an initiative it launched in November. The distribution of the pads began at the start of the school year. Kwazulu-Natal education department spokesperson Muzi Mahlambi said that when the new MEC, Mthandeni Dlungwane, came into office last year it was “one of the flagships that he said he wanted to run with”. “Research and observation tells us that our girl learners, who are from poor families, can’t afford to buy sanitary towels. In a year, they will miss a minimum of 36 days when they have their periods,” Mahlambi said. Some companies and individuals have been assisting schools with donations but this was not enough for all the girl learners and a formal programme had to be launched, he explained. The department has set aside R50-million to fund the distribution of pads to learners whose schools are in the four lowest quintiles. The department will increase the budget for the pads annually. continue

Reversible saliva allows frogs to hang on to next meal.

A frog uses its whip-like tongue to snag its prey faster than a human can blink, hitting it with a force five times greater than gravity. How does it hang onto its meal as the food rockets back into its mouth? A new Georgia Institute of Technology study says the tongue's stickiness is caused by a unique reversible saliva in combination with a super soft tongue. A frog's saliva is thick and sticky during prey capture, then turns thin and watery as prey is removed inside the mouth. The tongue, which was found to be as soft as brain tissue and 10 times softer than a human's tongue, stretches and stores energy much like a spring. This combination of spit and softness is so effective that it provides the tongue 50 times greater work of adhesion than synthetic polymer materials such as sticky-hand toys.continue

US exports 14 million eggs to avian flu-struck S. Korea.

The U.S. exported 14 million eggs to South Korea in January as the nation continues to deal with a widespread avian influenza outbreak. On January 30, members of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service (USDA AMS) updated the United Egg Producers on U.S. egg exports during the egg industry group’s meeting in Atlanta. Jeff Waite, a representative of AMS, said the two countries reached an agreement in early January. After weeks of airborne shipments, he said, eggs will start arriving by sea soon. South Korea, one of many Asian nations affected by the current outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), is suffering from its worst-ever HPAI outbreak. South Korean news agency Yonhap reports the country has culled more than 30 million chickens since November in response to the outbreak. In response to massive egg shortages driving up food prices, South Korea and the U.S. reached an agreement on January 8 to allow the first-ever imports of US eggs to the country. Koreans eat about 250 eggs per capita, or about 12.7 billion eggs per year. source

Tuberculosis-resistant cows developed for the first time using CRISPR technology.

A new research published in the open access journal Genome Biology,reports that CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technology has been used for the first time to successfully produce live cows with increased resistance to bovine tuberculosis. The researchers, from the College of Veterinary Medicine, Northwest A&F University in Shaanxi, China, used a modified version of the CRISPR gene-editing technology to insert a new gene into the cow genome with no detected off target effects on the animals genetics (a common problem when creating transgenic animals using CRISPR). CRISPR technology has become widely used in the laboratory in recent years as it is an accurate and relatively easy way to modify the genetic code. However, sometimes unintentional changes to the genetic code occur as an off target effect, so finding ways to reduce these is a priority for genomics research. The research was carried out using a novel version of the CRISPR system called CRISPR/Cas9n to successfully insert a tuberculosis resistance gene, called NRAMP1, into the cow genome. This was successfully inserted and resulted in the development of live cows carrying increased resistance to tuberculosis. The high-point of the research is that the method produced no off target effects on the cow genetics meaning that the CRISPR technology we employed may be better suited to producing transgenic livestock with purposefully manipulated genetics. The researchers inserted the NRAMP1 gene into the genome of bovine foetal fibroblasts—a cell derived from female dairy cows—using the CRISPR/Cas9n technology. These cells were then used as donor cells in a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer, where the nucleus of a donor cell carrying the new gene is inserted into an egg cell, known as an ovum, from a female cow. Ova were nurtured in the lab into embryos before being transferred into mother cows for a normal pregnancy cycle. The experiments were also conducted using the standard CRISPR/Cas9 technology as a comparison.