News

"Scientists make schizophrenia breakthrough"

By Rob Winters - Published on Tuesday, 09 August 2011 19:50

"US scientists say they have "fundamentally transformed" the understanding of the genetics of schizophrenia.

A report in the journal Nature Genetics showed that "fresh mutations" in DNA are involved in at least half of schizophrenia cases, when there is no family history of the illness.

Researchers found mutations in 40 different genes. They say their findings explain the high number of cases around the world.

Schizophrenia is quite common, it affects one in every 100 people during their lifetime. Genes play a part in the illness. A tenth of people with schizophrenia also have a parent with the condition.

New mutations

However, researchers now say there is a genetic role even in cases which have not been inherited."

"UK riots: What turns people into looters?"

By Rob Winters - Published on Tuesday, 09 August 2011 19:44

"There have been some extraordinary scenes in London and other cities this week, from burning buildings and running street battles, to people unashamedly walking into a shop and leaving with a flat-screen television under their arms.

Many of the looters have not bothered to cover their faces as they raided electrical stores, sports shops and off-licences.

Some have even posed for a picture afterwards, proudly showing off their haul and posting the images on social-networking sites.

Prof John Pitts, a criminologist who advises several London local authorities on young people and gangs, says some of those taking the lead in the looting will be known to the authorities, while others are swept along.

Rioters have set fire to cars and buses.

He says looting makes "powerless people suddenly feel powerful" and that is "very intoxicating".

'The world has been turned upside down........"

"Brazil moves to prevent 'massacre' of Amazon tribe by drug traffickers"

By Rob Winters - Published on Tuesday, 09 August 2011 19:22

"The head of Brazil's indigenous protection service is to make an emergency visit to a remote jungle outpost, amid fears that members of an isolated Amazon tribe may have been "massacred" by drug traffickers.

Fears for the tribe's wellbeing have been escalating since late July when a group of heavily armed Peruvian traffickers reportedly invaded its land, triggering a crisis in the remote border region between Brazil and Peru.

On 5 August Brazilian federal police launched an operation in the region, arresting Joaquim Antônio Custódio Fadista, a Portuguese man alleged to have been operating as a cocaine trafficker."

"No kissing please ... we're over 45"

By Rob Winters - Published on Monday, 08 August 2011 20:59

"No one really knows how much kissing the over 45s do, because we don't tell. And we don't go blabbing the private details of our private life to any old survey person. We're usually more discreet and polite than you lot.

We – I have done a quick but thorough survey of my peers – think that your kissing habits are none of your business. Nor do we want to see anyone else kissing, especially in a supermarket. All right, a peck on the cheek if you must, but not a tongue down the throat at the cheese counter. I am often thrilled and over-excited while shopping, but only by bargains. I even find it frightfully embarrassing to write about snogging, or to watch it – particularly on telly – because it usually leads to something worse."

"Let's dispel this gloom about living longer"

By Rob Winters - Published on Monday, 08 August 2011 20:40

"One afternoon my daughter and I walked through the cemetery next to the parsonage in Haworth, the home of the Brontë family in Yorkshire. Densely packed tombstones mostly told the same story. Sibling after sibling from family after family buried long before they reached their 12th birthday. In 1850, a public inquiry into sanitation in the village revealed that the average life expectancy of its citizens was 25.4 years, not many months short of my daughter's age, victims of dirty water and inadequate sewage systems.

Two days after that visit, the Department for Work and Pensions published a study that predicted that babies born this year are 50 times more likely to become centenarians than those born 100 years ago."

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