Posts in category: Uncategorized

Cancer-causing chemical compounds called nitrosamines have been detected in a range of everyday foods and could pose a health risk to consumers, the European Food Safety Agency warned on Tuesday.

Brienne Miner, MD, MHS, assistant professor of medicine (geriatrics), loves to talk about sleep. She first became interested in the subject when she noticed the prevalence of sleep problems among her older patients, and the detrimental impact of sleep deprivation. Now, her passion lies in developing strategies to improve sleep—which can lead to better physical and mental functioning in older adults—and sharing her knowledge.

Evidence of an increase in injecting drug use at a global level highlights the need for improved coverage of interventions to prevent and manage drug-related harms among people who inject drugs (PWID), say two new reviews led by researchers at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Center (NDARC) and the Kirby Institute at UNSW Sydney.

The fast motor kinetics of prestin, a protein found in the inner ear, is essential for hearing high-frequency sounds, according to a Northwestern Medicine study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

By NATION  REPORTER

THE UPND should resist all temptations of silencing the critical voices of the opposition and revert the country to the dreaded days of the One-Party State but promote the tenets of democracy for which Zambia has been known for and being admired for, Brian Mundubile has advised.

Mr Mundubile, the Leader of the Opposition in Parliament is concerned that the UPND had started manifesting remnants of dictatorship by becoming averse to divergent views and silencing the voices of the opposition.

Mr Mundubile says Zambians had rejected the dictatorship of the One-Party state and shall resist any remnants of absolutism wherever it shall manifest during the UPND reign in government.

Recently, Transparency International Zambia (TI-Z) vice chairperson Reuben Lifuka observed that UPND had started showing remnants of a One-Party State and advised the governing party against weaponizing the law enforcement agencies.

But Mr Mundubile said President Hakainde Hichilema and the UPND administration should care to know that they were democratically elected and should never entertain the temptation of taking Zambia back to the dark days of the One-Party state.

He explained that so far, there had been clear indications that the UPND was weaponizing the law enforcement agencies, turning the institutions of good governance into tools of political harassment and retribution against their perceived political foes.

Mr. Mundubile who is PF presidential candidate said new dawn administration should not be tempted to consider a One-Party State but should instead focus on addressing the free-fall of the Kwacha, the high prices of fuel at which is now K29, high ZESCO connection fees which have been increased from K750 to K14,000, the shortage of essential medicines, high cost of fertilizer and high cost of mealie meal.

He said the UPND administration was weaponisation the law enforcement agencies to suppress the freedoms and rights of citizens, cautioning that Zambians had been enjoying democracy since 1991 and would not allow to be taken back of the days of absolutism.

Mr. Mundubile said the arrests that have been conducted in the past one year clearly showed that UPND would never tolerate criticism despite Zambia being a constitutional democracy.

“If you interrogate and find out the nature of these offenses for which these arrests on the many Zambians, you will conclude that the UPND government is just weaponising law enforcement agencies to intimidate citizens,” He said.

 But President Hichilema should just concentrate on delivering to Zambians. Let the President deal with Kwacha that is not showing any signs of recovery from its free fall. Zambians would be happy if President Hichilema reduced the high cost of fuel, mealie meal, the shortage of essential medicines in hospitals and reducing the Zesco tariffs and connections fees,” Mr Mundubile said.

Mr. Mundubile said the UPND administration was attempting to instill fear in the minds of citizens so that they do not associate, speak and move freely, which characterized as typical traits of totalitarianism

“For those of us that were there during the UNIP time, this is déjà vu. We have been there and saw times like this,” he said.

Mr. Mundubile said it was a timely warning to those in the UPND administration that they should resist the temptation of taking Zambia 40 years back because the country had moved on.

“Zambians have enjoyed freedom under this democratic dispensation because we are indeed a constitutional democracy and we expect the Government to govern using the rule of law,” Mr Mundubile said.

Mr. Mundubile said the UPND administration should have cared to audit events that had taken place in the country from the time they took over power before accepting to host the Democracy Summit.

An international research collaboration has developed a VR imaging system that can measure a wide range of neural activity in the cortices of mice during active behavior. This enabled them to illuminate the abnormalities in cortical functional network dynamics that are found in autism model mice. Using machine learning, they were also able to highly accurately distinguish between autism model mice and wild-type mice based on the cortical functional network patterns when the mice start or stop running. The results of this research have been published in Cell Reports on March 28.

Fibroblasts build and maintain the extracellular matrix, or physical scaffolding for cells, in the connective tissues within the body. It is believed that cancerous tumors can recruit nearby fibroblasts and use them to promote their own growth and invasion. This process, called cancer-associated fibroblast activation, can also protect tumors from chemotherapy and make treatment difficult.

By NATION REPORTER

A LOT of money is being looted from the National Health Insurance Management Authority (NHIMA) using private pharmacies at the expense of public pharmacies in the hospitals, Forum for Democracy and Development (FDD) president Edith Nawakwi has said.

 Ms. Nawakwi said the way NHIMA was planned by the Patriotic Front (PF) under former President Edgar Lungu was that the Ministry of Health was buying drugs using money from NHIMA and stock public pharmacies in hospitals so that the people who were accredited could be accessing the drugs.

 She said but what was happening under the UPND was that they were encouraging people who own private pharmacies to get accreditation at NHIMA so that they could refer patients to those pharmacies while public pharmacies in hospitals had no drugs.

Ms Nawakwi said since government was not ready to stock up drugs in public hospitals, some unscrupulous and politically exposed persons in the UPND have taken advantage by setting up private pharmacies and were getting accredited to NHIMA and that Government was paying heavily for their services.

 “Yes, check in these hospitals and pharmacies that are NHIMA accredited. Their drugs are expensive compared to those that are not accredited. We cannot continue like this, they have destroyed what NHIMA was meant for,” Ms Nawakwi said.

 She said it was difficult to explain why under a regime that boasts of having apportioned the biggest percent of money to the Ministry of Health in their budget was still struggling with shortage of drugs in almost all the hospitals.  

 Ms. Nawakwi said civil servants and other companies who were in rural areas that were under NHIMA were paying for the services that were not accessible because rural areas did not have the private pharmacies.

She stated that private pharmacies were getting the biggest chunk of the money while public pharmacies in rural areas depended on public health facilities that did not have drugs.  

A team of researchers from the U.K. and U.S. conducted the first ever investigation into how a facial transplant recipient started to accept their new appearance as part of their own identity.

Scientists have identified an autoinflammatory disease caused by mutations in the LYN gene, an important regulator of immune responses in health and disease. Named Lyn kinase-associated vasculopathy and liver fibrosis (LAVLI), the identification sheds light on how genes linked to certain illnesses can potentially be targets for treatment by repurposing existing drugs.