Younis Khan: “Warne has been a great bowler and a opponent to respect and admire. His success I think has a lot to do with the way he picks up weaknesses in a batsman so quickly and the good thing he is not afraid to back his players. He is in good control of the situation and always thinking ahead which are signs of a good captain”

Indians Find U.S. at Fault in Food Cost

By HEATHER TIMMONS

Published: May 14, 2008

NEW DELHI — Instead of blaming India and other developing nations for the rise in food prices, Americans should rethink their energy policy — and go on a diet.

That has been the response, basically, of a growing number of politicians, economists and academics in this country, who are angry at statements by top United States officials that India’s rising prosperity is to blame for food inflation.

The debate has sometimes devolved into what sounded like petty playground taunts over who are the real gluttons devouring the world’s resources.

For instance, Pradeep S. Mehta, secretary general of the center for international trade, economics and the environment of CUTS International, an independent research institute based here, said that if Americans slimmed down to the weight of middle-class Indians, “many hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa would find food on their plates.”

He added, archly, that the money spent in the United States on liposuction to get rid of fat from excess consumption could be funneled to feed famine victims.

Mr. Mehta’s comments may sound like the macroeconomic equivalent of “so’s your old man,” but they reflect genuine outrage — and ballooning criticism — toward the United States in particular, over recent remarks by President Bush.

After a news conference in Missouri on May 2, he was quoted as saying of India’s burgeoning middle class, “When you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food, and so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up.”

The comments, widely reported in the developing world, followed a statement on the subject by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that had upset many Indians.

In response to the president’s remarks, a ranking official in the commerce ministry, Jairam Ramesh, told the Press Trust of India, “George Bush has never been known for his knowledge of economics,” and the remarks proved again how “comprehensively wrong” he is.

The Asian Age, a newspaper based here, argued in an editorial last week that Mr. Bush’s “ignorance on most matters is widely known and openly acknowledged by his own countrymen,” and that he must not be allowed to “get away” with an effort to “divert global attention from the truth by passing the buck on to India.”

The developing nations, and in particular China and India, are being blamed for global problems, including the rising cost of commodities and the increase in greenhouse gas emissions, because they are consuming more goods and fuel than ever before. But Indians from the prime minister’s office on down frequently point out that per capita, India uses far lower quantities of commodities and pollutes far less than nations in the West, particularly the United States.

Explaining the food price increases, Indian politicians and academics cite consumption in the United States; the West’s diversion of arable land into the production of ethanol and other biofuels; agricultural subsidies and trade barriers from Washington and the European Union; and finally the decline in the exchange rate of the dollar.

There may be some foundation to Indians’ accusations of hypocrisy by the West. The United States uses — or throws away — 3,770 calories a person each day, according to data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization collected in 2001-3, compared with 2,440 calories per person in India. Americans are also the largest per capita consumers in any major economy of the most energy-intensive common food source, beef, the Agriculture Department says.

And the United States and Canada lead the world in oil consumption per person, according to the Energy Information Administration, an Energy Department agency.

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR

Published: May 13, 2008

DENTAL cavities are not good news, but when it comes to preventive oral health, they may be among the smaller problems.

The advice is familiar: brush and floss regularly, use fluoride mouthwash, limit snacks and sweet drinks, visit the dentist twice a year. Good suggestions, even if not everyone follows them: by age 12, 50 percent of children have cavities. But there are two much more serious problems, common dental diseases that can lead not only to loss of teeth but also to loss of life: periodontal disease and oral cancer.

Periodontal disease — a chronic bacterial infection of the gums that destroys the bone and tissues that hold the teeth — is the leading cause of tooth loss in adults. Some people are genetically susceptible, and the problem can be aggravated by smoking, taking certain medications, stress and other factors.

Several studies have found that gum disease is associated with an increased risk for heart attack. “It isn’t nailed down yet,” said Dr. Martin J. Davis, professor of clinical dentistry at the College of Dental Medicine at Columbia, “but there seems to be a link between the inflammation of gums and the inflammatory markers of heart disease.”

It may be that oral bacteria enter the bloodstream, attach to fatty plaques in the coronary arteries and cause clots to form. Or maybe inflammation itself increases plaque buildup. A 2007 study showed that periodontal disease increased the risk of heart disease in men by one third and doubled it in women, even after controlling for smoking.

Studies also suggest that gum disease is associated with the risk for stroke, altered glycemic control in people with diabetes and adverse pregnancy conditions like pre-eclampsia (pregnancy-ind
uced high blood pressure), low birth weight and preterm birth. When periodontal disease is treated by reducing inflammation and lowering the quantities of harmful bacteria in the mouth, it can have a major impact on inflammation in the rest of the body.

Oral cancer is the second serious dental problem. It afflicts about 34,000 people a year and kills 8,000. Dr. Michael Kahn, a professor of oral pathology at Tufts University, compares oral cancer with the 11,000 cases of cervical cancer that are detected by the 60 million pap smears administered every year. “A person dies every hour around the clock from oral cancer,” he said, “yet it’s a struggle to get insurance to cover any of the new screening tests. It causes at least twice as many deaths as cervical cancer, but we’ve paid for pap smears — which have reduced cervical cancer by 90 percent.”

By GINA KOLATA

Published: May 13, 2008

DR. PAUL D. THOMPSON, a 60-year-old marathon runner and chief of cardiology at Hartford Hospital, stood in front of a medical audience recently and began his talk with a story about himself.

“I’ve been lifting weights since I was 12 years old and look at me,” he said. Dr. Thompson is small and wiry with not a bulging muscle on him. He speculated that he must have a genetic inability to build muscles, no matter how hard he works at it.

But are his muscles healthy?

It is not the kind of question most people ask themselves. But muscle researchers say it is important because muscle health is emerging as an important part of overall health. And, they say, when it comes to muscles, bulk does not matter. How big they can become depends on your sex as well as genetics. What matters for health is whether, like Dr. Thompson, you use them.

Healthy muscles, researchers say, are those that have been worked, stressed and pushed to their limit so that they have enough power and strength to get you through life, especially as you grow older. And keeping muscles fit takes effort, which means regular training with weight lifting and cardiovascular exercise even if the results are not a sculptured look, these experts add.

If you don’t work your muscles, they will atrophy, especially as you grow older. Older people often fall because they are too weak to brace themselves, and they have trouble with steps and opening jars because their muscles have lost so much strength. Much of that loss can be avoided, muscle researchers say. Even elderly people can gain muscle strength if they work at it, studies have shown.

There are two aspects to healthy muscles: endurance and strength, said Robert H. Fitts, an exercise physiologist at Marquette University and chairman of the biology department there. To maintain endurance, you should engage in activities that pump blood to the muscles, like walking. For strength, you need to lift weights, concentrating on what Professor Fitts calls the antigravity muscles, those of the back and legs. And, he adds, you should also maintain arm strength.

But while many people walk, fewer lift weights, and those who do often use incorrect techniques, said William J. Kraemer, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Connecticut.

Some try to do it on their own but tend to buy weights that are too light and may not know the well-researched methods that get results.

Others go to gyms, where they may be intimidated when they venture into weight rooms filled with people grunting and straining and machines that can seem daunting. Those who do try to lift at the gym can end up using weights that are not heavy enough to fully stimulate their muscles.

That is especially true of women, Dr. Kraemer said, even those who work with personal trainers. While women often say they are afraid they will bulk up, this fear is unfounded, Dr. Kraemer and others say. Acquiring muscle mass requires testosterone levels that women don’t have. Instead, the toning that many women say they want comes from lifting heavy weights.

The most effective way to stimulate muscles is with a system known as progressive resistance. This approach can take about three hours a week and includes days, once a week or so, when you lift weights so heavy that you can do only three to five repetitions before your muscles are too tired to lift again.

Other days are devoted to moderate resistance, with weights you can lift 8 to 10 times. And then you should have some light days, with weights you can lift 12 to 15 times before your muscles tire.

It may sound like a lot of effort, but even people like Dr. Thompson, who does not acquire bulk, benefit.

“I still lift,” he said, “because it makes doing other stuff — yardwork, carrying groceries, carrying grandkids — easier. “I think some folks outlive their muscles, meaning that they are fine menta

She was never on time to clinic appointments. Leaving her apartment was not simple when it required pushing aside the furniture she had pushed against the front door the night before, and even the furniture was no protection against the threats she perceived.

She said strange men burrowed into the apartment after dark, right through the door, the chest of drawers and the armchairs. They entered her body, and then they ate her up from the inside.

It took years before she told us this. We might doubt her, but she knew it happened. Numerous expensive antipsychotics made no difference at all.

She smoked heavily, partly from anxiety and partly because, like many chronically institutionalized patients, she had been bribed into placidity with cigarettes years earlier. Before her first psychotic break, she had been a singer. Smoking was not good for her voice, of course, but under these harrowing circumstances, quitting was impossible.

A few days after an appointment at which she had looked even wearier than usual, she collapsed. In the emergency room, her blood sodium was low. The medical resident decided it was from her psychiatric medication; he discontinued some, decreased others and sent her home.

Three months later, while defensively moving furniture, she had a seizure. Back in the hospital, she still had low sodium, but a scan showed diffuse lung cancer, metastatic to bones and brain. Her problem was not a result of psychiatric medications.

She refused to acknowledge her cancer, but she demanded that everything reasonable and unreasonable be done for the illness she insisted did not exist. When she grew too weak from chemotherapy and radiation to live alone — much less move the furniture — she was transferred to a rehabilitation facility. The consultant there stopped all of her medications except for a low dose of a single antipsychotic. In his view, the drugs increased her fatigue from the medical therapies. In our view, he might as well have been treating a raging pneumonia with a vitamin.

Two months before she died, she came to see us. She arrived in a wheelchair, unable to walk from metastatic fractures, wearing a stylish bandanna. She was hard to recognize physically, and almost impossible to recognize mentally. She was rational, brisk and organized. She told us she had decided to stop the chemotherapy and radiation. “It’s cancer; there’s no cure,” she said, as I recall. She was lucid as could be, on almost no medication at all, with not one molecule of paranoia or a single misconception. We were the ones confused. We were astounded.

Then she told us something else astounding. Love had come into her life.

During the last few M.R.I.’s that tracked the progress of her tumors, a radiology technician had given her headphones to pass the time. Jazz began to play, and then each time, in the M.R.I. tube, a famous singer appeared in the dark.

She recognized him immediately. “I can’t tell you who he is,” she said, modestly, “because he’s married.” Still, she couldn’t keep

FOR years, people with worn-out knees were told to wait as long as possible before opting for replacement. Wait until you are older, the thinking went, so the joint will outlive you.

But medical experts say doctors and patients are pushing the limits of their old joints too far. Improvements in artificial joint technology and surgical techniques mean replacements are lasting longer than ever — often 20 years or more. But doctors are still advising candidates for replacement to “wait until you can’t stand it.” As a result, some patients wait until the cartilage in their knees wears out completely, leaving them housebound and with painful bone-on-bone rubbing in their knees.

The problem is that patients who wait too long become so debilitated that recovery is harder and function is often not fully regained. “There’s definitely a point where there’s a diminishing return if you wait too long,” said Lynn Snyder-Mackler, a professor in the department of physical therapy at the University of Delaware. “You end up trading one set of impairments for another.”

About one in five adults has arthritis or chronic joint pain. As people age, cartilage begins to wear, and the resulting inflammation causes swelling, pain and stiffness. Jobs and sports that involve repetitive motion on a particular joint can increase the risk of developing arthritis in that joint. Family history and weight gain also play a role.

Joint replacement is not inevitable once arthritis sets in. Treating the pain and inflammation early on can help people maintain function longer. Over-the-counter and prescription pain relievers as well as supplements like glucosamine and chondroitin may offer relief. Maintaining a healthy weight lowers risk for arthritis in the knees. Moderate exercise can also help.

As for surgery, women appear more likely than men to wait too long before opting for it. It may be that they are more inclined to accept the limits of weakened knees. Doctors may discourage women from surgery because they typically live longer than men.

In research published last fall in The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, Dr. Snyder-Mackler and colleagues studied 95 men and 126 women who were to have knee replacements. They found that even after controlling for gender differences in strength and agility, the women had far higher levels of impairment before choosing surgery than the men had.

And earlier this year, The Canadian Medical Association Journal reported that doctors recommended surgery more often for men than for women. University of Toronto researchers selected one man and one woman, both 67, who had identical levels of knee osteoarthritis. They each went on separate visits to 29 orthopedic surgeons and 38 family doctors. Although they both described similar symptoms, two-thirds of the doctors recommended knee replacement for the man, while only a third thought it appropriate for the woman.

After years of suffering, Craig Mason, 65, of Whittier, Calif., insisted that her doctor refer her for a knee replacement. Ms. Mason could get around only using a walker. She said that when she was “truly incapacitated,” her doctor still wanted her to postpone surgery.

“My primary physician kept putting it off and putting it off, and finally I almost had to threaten and say, You’ve got to do something about this,” she said. “He just wanted me to get older.”

Last year, Ms. Mason underwent surgery. Recovery was painful, she said. But unlike the chronic pain associated with her knee, the pain of surgery and physical therapy eventually disappeare

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR

Published: May 13, 2008

In a large randomized trial of human lactation, researchers have found evidence that prolonged breast-feeding is associated with improved scores on some intelligence tests in childhood.

The results, published in the May issue of The Archives of General Psychiatry, appear to confirm those of previous observational studies.

Researchers in Belarus trained 8,457 mother-infant pairs with an extensive breast-feeding educational program, while a control group of 7,856 received standard care. At three months, 73 percent of the trained mothers, but only 60 percent of the controls, were still exclusively breast-feeding. By six months, exclusive breast-feeding had declined substantially in both groups, to 7.9 percent for the education group and 0.6 percent for the controls.

At 6 ½ years, the breast-fed group scored significantly higher on tests of vocabulary, word matching and verbal I.Q., although the differences in several other tests of intelligence were not significant. Teacher ratings of the children were consistently higher for those who were breast-fed.

It is unclear whether the differences were caused by a constituent of breast milk or by the associated physical and social interactions between mother and child. But the lead author, Dr. Michael S. Kramer, a professor of pediatrics at McGill University in Montreal, said the results could not be explained by characteristics of the mother or the way she related to her baby. “It’s the breast-feeding that’s doing it,” he said.

IT’S time to step off the scale and get out the tape measure.

The size of your waist can tell you far more about the state of your health than the number on a bathroom scale. Studies have linked larger waist sizes to higher risk for heart attack, cancer, diabetes, dementia and even incontinence.

Last month, Harvard Medical School researchers reported on a study of 44,000 nurses that showed even normal-weight women face twice the risk of premature death from heart disease or cancer if they are thick around the middle. Other studies have shown similar risks for men.

The notion of waist size as a barometer of health has been around for years, but the vast majority of doctors still put patients on a scale and calculate their body mass index, which measures weight relative to height.

But many studies of both men and women now suggest that it is not how much you weigh but where you carry your weight that matters most to your health.

In March, an analysis in The Journal of Clinical Epidemiology showed that body mass index is the “poorest” indicator of cardiovascular health, and that waist size is a much better way to determine, for both sexes, who is at a higher risk for hypertension, diabetes and elevated cholesterol.

Studies suggest that health risks begin to increase when a woman’s waist reaches 31.5 inches and her risk jumps substantially once her waist expands to 35 inches or more. For men, risk starts to climb at 37 inches, but it becomes a bigger worry once their waists reach or exceed 40 inches.

However, those numbers are based on averages and are not always useful for very tall or short people, children or certain ethnic groups. Among the Japanese, for instance, health risks start to increase for men with a waist size above 33.5 inches, but for Japanese women, risk does not increase until their waists expand to 35.5 inches.

Last month, The International Journal of Obesity suggested that, particularly for young people, the waist-to-height ratio might be a better indicator of overall health risks. Put simply, your waist should be less than half your height.

But a thick waist does not always correspond with poor health. One extreme example is the Japanese sumo wrestler who despite his massive size still might have the cardiovascular health of a slimmer athlete. Sumo wrestlers typically store fat just beneath their skin, where it doesn’t cause harm, rather than deeper in their abdomen.

Still, for most people, waist size is important. “We’ve known for a long time that people who tend to deposit fat inside their abdomen are the ones who have the highest risk for diabetes and heart attacks,” said Dr. Arya M. Sharma, chairman of obesity research and management at the University of Alberta. “For most people who are not sumo wrestlers, it’s actually quite a good indicator.”

Having a large waist means you are more likely to have fat around your heart, liver and even ordinary muscles, and it signals that you should be screened for other health problems, like insulin resistance and high cholesterol — particularly high triglycerides.

Losing even a little weight can have a big effect. In a small study, 20 severely obese patients who were put on a very low-calorie diet lost an average of 20 percent of their b

Dravid is bearing the brunt of disappointing performance by the Royal Challengers team. After CEO Charu Sharma was fired, Mallya has taken potshots on Dravid.

Mallya: “I had a separate list of players that I wanted. But since Dravid is such an iconic player I trusted his judgment. And Charu Sharma also backed him. After seeing the final list, my friends told me it looked like a Test team. But I backed both of them thinking that they advised me properly. Unfortunately in cricket, unlike in any other sport, the captain is the boss.”

“At the end of the day, people need to understand that the IPL has a corporate side to it, and a very definitive corporate side. It is not at all cricket in the traditional sense”

Now the media also seem to pose some tough questions for Rahul Dravid. At a press meet in Mohali, Dravid was asked how it felt to be termed a ‘good Test team’.

Dravid: ‘‘We have not played good cricket, so such comments will come. It is disappointing for the team, for all who are part of it including the franchisee. But we still have six matches to go and will bounce back with a good performance’’

On the choice of players’ right as the auction?

Dravid: ‘‘We
ll, there were lot of variables at the auction. The players we picked are all quality players, it’s only that their performances have dipped. The big names are not doing well. We have not got the combination right. All this as magnified after we did not start well and lost some close matches.”

07 May 2008

Encouraged by the success of running a tribal school in Bhubaneswar, Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) is planning to a start a similar school near Bangalore.

The proposed school complex would come up in five to ten acres of land to provide education and necessary infrastructure facilities, including accommodation to the tribal children. A proposal had already been submitted to Karnataka Governor Rameshwar Thakur seeking allotment of land.

Disclosing this to UNI, KISS Founder Secretary Achyuta Samanta said here that the school would initially provide free education to around 1000 children belonging to tribal families. Funds required for the project would be raised locally, once the land was allotted by the Government, he added.

The ultimate objective was to set up a University of Tribals, exclusively for children hailing from various tribal belts across the country. Facilities, among others, to be provided at the University included food, clothes, books and education from Kindergarten to Post Graduation, all under one roof, he added.

He said KISS had already succeeded in its venture to provide free education to tribal children in Bhubaneswar, where 5000 children were accommodated in a Tribal Residential School in the KISS campus. This included some from tribes classified as primitive. The intake would be increased to 8000 children during this year, he added.

Dr Samanta, who has the distinction of being the youngest Vice-Chancellor of a University in India, as recorded by Limca Book, has to his credit a conglomeration of educational Institutions, ranging from Engineering, Rural Management, Computer, Language, Law and Health through a non-governmental organisation called Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT).