TUMAINI JIPYA

Wednesday, 10 December 2014

Family meals 'boost child fruit and vegetable intake'

Eating meals as a family improves children's eating habits - even if it only happens once or twice a week, UK researchers suggest.

It is recommended children eat five portions of fruit and vegetables per day - about 400g.

The Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health study found those who always ate together achieved this - but those who only did sometimes came close.

Watching parents and siblings eat teaches good habits, experts said.

Parental example

This study looked at just under 2,400 children at 52 primary schools in south London.

Parents and fieldworkers compiled food diaries at school and at home, ticking off all the foods and drinks a child had in one 24-hour period.

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Eating at a table with the family instead of in front of the TV helps reduce chances of mindless eating”

Azmina Govindj

British Dietetic Association

Parents were also asked questions about their attitudes to fruit and vegetables, such as "On average, how many nights a week does your family eat at a table?" and "Do you cut up fruit and vegetables for your child to eat?"

The study found 656 families said they always ate meals together at a table, 768 sometimes did, while 92 families never did so.

Children in the "always" group ate five portions of fruit and vegetables, compared with 4.6 in the "sometimes" group and 3.3 in the "never".

That equates to the always group eating 125g more fruit and veg, and the sometimes group eating 95g more a day than the never group.

Seeing parents eat fruit and vegetables - and cutting up portions for children both boosted their intake.

'Future habits'

The researchers say that, while this study gives a picture of eating habits on one day, it was able to investigate the diets of a large, diverse population.

Meaghan Christian, who conducted the study as part of her PhD, said: "Modern life often prevents the whole family from sitting round the dinner table, but this research shows that even just Sunday lunch round the table can help improve the diets of our families."

She added: "We spend a lot of time looking at interventions at school. But this is showing how important parents are in terms of fruit and vegetable consumption."

And Prof Janet Cade, of the University of Leeds' school of food science and nutrition, who supervised the study, said: "Watching the way their parents or siblings eat and the different types of food they eat is pivotal in creating children's own food habits and preferences."

She added: "Since dietary habits are established in childhood, the importance of promoting the family meal needs to be more prominent in public health campaigns."

Azmina Govindji, of the British Dietetic Association, said: "Eating habits developed in childhood die hard, and eating at a table with the family instead of in front of the TV helps reduce chances of mindless eating, which can increase the likelihood of obesity.

"This study reinforces the view that children learn more from what we do than what we say, so it's the role modelling that helps shape their future habits."

Ms Govindji, a practising dietitian, added: "If children are eating better in childhood, they are more likely to make healthier choices in adult life - and since food directly impacts risks of conditions like heart disease and type 2 diabetes, eating together as a family seems like a small price to pay."

Offer vegetables early and often to fussy toddlers, study says

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Offer vegetables early and often to fussy toddlers, study says

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vigilantes aim to rout Boko Haram in Nigeria

In northeastern Nigeria, the Civilian Joint Task Force patrols streets with guns, machetes and even bows and arrows.

Maiduguri, Nigeria - Nigerians living in the northeastern city of Maiduguri go about their lives under the daily threat of attacks from the notorious rebel group Boko Haram.

Once described as the "home of peace" by locals, Maiduguri - the capital of Borno state - is now better known as the epicentre of deadly attacks and abductions that have killed thousands of Nigerians in schools, churches, mosques and markets.

According to Amnesty International, more than 1,500 people have been killed in northeastern Nigeria since the start of 2014. This month alone, more than 450 civilians have been killed in attacks, and hundreds of abducted schoolgirls remain missing.

In response to Boko Haram's attacks, a vigilante group in Maiduguri calling itself the Borno Youth Association of Peace and Justice - also known as the Civilian Joint Task Force (JTF) - was formed by local residents to protect their town and neighbouring villages.

"I joined the Civilian Joint Task Force June 12 last year," said Shehu Abdul Gani, a 35-year-old civil servant who worked in the local government in the town of Bama before it was bombed on May 7, 2013. "At that time Boko Haram were living in the same environment as us," he said. "We would see them carrying guns. They would come out and kill our brothers and sisters any time. My brother was killed. They came into our house and shot him in the evening time. I was sitting right next to him. When I remember this incident, I don't have mercy for them ... We are chasing them with our sticks and cutlasses - we are going to chase them out of Nigeria."

Borno's local and state governments see the Civilian Joint Task Force as a necessity. The group maintains checkpoints, searches pedestrians, vehicles and residences, and provides intelligence to the Nigerian security services. In May 2013, a state of emergency was declared in Borno, and the Nigerian government sent in government troops to root out the rebel fighters. But they were unfamiliar with the geography and with locally known members of Boko Haram.

"We are [government troops'] eyes here. We are watching and listening for them. We are giving them information on anything they don't understand because we are the sons of the soil," said Shehu. "We knew Boko Haram and it just became too much ... Last June Boko Haram came and killed a 90-year-old woman, three children and many younger ones so we were very angry. So the next day we started this work. We started fishing them out inside the metropolis. We went searching house to house. If we saw people with a gun we would arrest them and hand them over to military personnel. That is the beginning of the Civilian JTF here."

Violence in northeastern Nigeria no longer fits the overly simplistic early narrative of Muslims killing Christians. Muslims have suffered from the insurgency also, and the Civilian JTF has united Nigerians living in Borno against a common enemy.

"In our Civilian JTF we have Muslims and Christians," said Bello Damvatta, a 49-year-old shop fitter and married father of four. "Our mission is to see peace return to Maiduguri and the entire nation. When people come out of their homes to go to the market or go to the office around eight or nine in the morning they hear pap-pap-pap-pap! ... Any person who comes to our area and kills somebody, we must grab him and hand him to the law, no matter how dangerous."

Today, visitors travelling to Maiduguri by road will notice an absence of uniformed military presence on the streets of the historic town. In their place stand men and boys as young as 12 manning checkpoints made out of old rubber tyres and mounds of chopped wood. The Borno State Government has launched the Borno Youth Empowerment Scheme (BOYES) and says it will train at least 5,000 local vigilantes by 2015. But now only a small number of the civilian JTF are trained to carry out life threatening volunteer activities. They are unarmed and carry only personal and locally donated swords, daggers, sticks and bows and arrows.

Despite this, they have been successful in their fight against Boko Haram. Shehu told Al Jazeera: "The work is successful in the metropolis and GRA [Government Residential Area]. You will never see any Boko Haram in these places now. But in the villages we still have a little problem. I've been to Sambisa to look for Boko Haram. It's a thick forest, but there are small villages within the Sambisa so the Boko Haram just go and conquer those villages, make it their place. They are using the villages."

That "little problem" is a big one, according to a Human Rights Watch report released last November. The report described the vigilantes as "a worrisome new dimension to the violence", saying Civilian JTF members "inform security forces about presumed local Boko Haram activity" and that "the Islamist group then retaliates against both the neighbourhood vigilante group and the broader community".

When asked about the risks involved in the vigilante work, Civilian JTF member and 39-year-old mechanic Samail Garkuwa responded, "What else should we do? We have to do something. This is our ancestral land, my children's land. I started doing this job for Civilian JTF because Boko Haram can kill any person: women, boys, old men, young girls, Christians, Muslims, anybody. Boko Haram killed my elder brother ... We are not politicians. We are not military, we do not have arms. We are just tired. Borno is the home of peace. We need that peace to return."

Nigerian vigilantes aim to rout Boko Haram

In northeastern Nigeria, the Civilian Joint Task Force patrols streets with guns, machetes and even bows and arrows.

Maiduguri, Nigeria - Nigerians living in the northeastern city of Maiduguri go about their lives under the daily threat of attacks from the notorious rebel group Boko Haram.

Drug Saves Fertility for Women With Cancer

A commonly used drug can help young women with breast cancer retain the ability to have babies, apparently protecting their ovaries from the damage caused by chemotherapy, researchers reported here on Friday.

The treatment could provide a new option for dealing with one of the painful dilemmas faced by young cancer patients — that doing the utmost to save their lives might impair or even ruin their fertility.

Researchers said the drug, goserelin, which temporarily shuts down the ovaries, appears to protect women from the more permanent premature menopause that can be induced by chemotherapy. In a clinical trial, women who were given goserelin injections along with chemotherapy had less ovarian failure and gave birth to more babies than women receiving only the chemotherapy.

“Premenopausal women beginning chemotherapy for early breast cancer should consider this new option to prevent premature ovarian death,” the study’s lead author, Dr. Halle Moore of the Cleveland Clinic, said at a news conference here at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

Dr. Ann H. Partridge, a breast cancer specialist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and another author of the study, said about 16,000 American women under age 45 get breast cancer each year. Impaired fertility from chemotherapy is also a problem for women and men with other types of cancer and for children who survive the disease, though it is not clear if the results of this study would apply to them, she said.

Goserelin is sold by AstraZeneca under the brand name Zoladex. Global sales of the drug were about $1 billion in 2013. Goserelin and similar drugs, known as gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists, are commonly used as hormonal therapies to treat breast and prostate cancer. They are also used at fertility clinics to control the timing of ovulation.

The main option now for young breast cancer patients wanting to increase their chances of having babies is to have multiple eggs removed from their ovaries, as is done for in vitro fertilization. The eggs can be frozen or used to create embryos, which are then frozen.

But that is an invasive procedure and can cost $10,000 or more. And in some cases women have to start chemotherapy so quickly they do not have the two to three weeks needed to undergo the egg retrieval process.

Once-a-month injections of goserelin during chemotherapy could be a less expensive and easier alternative. In the study, each goserelin injection costs about $500 to $600, including the costs of giving the shot, said Dr. Kathy S. Albain of Loyola University Chicago, the senior author of the study. In the study, women typically needed four injections.

But until now, studies testing goserelin and similar drugs have reported inconsistent results. The oncology society’s guidelines say there is insufficient evidence that the approach is effective and that it “should not be relied on to preserve fertility.”

Dr. Partridge, who is on the committee that developed the guidelines, said she thought they would have to be reviewed in light of the new study.

The trial, which was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, involved 257 premenopausal women up to age 49 undergoing chemotherapy before or after having their tumors removed surgically.

Two years after starting chemotherapy, only 8 percent of the women who had received the monthly goserelin injections experienced ovarian failure, compared to 22 percent of those who did not. Twenty-one percent of the women in the goserelin group became pregnant and 15 percent had babies, while in the control group, only 11 percent became pregnant and 7 percent gave birth. Researchers said that difference could not be explained by a difference in the numbers of women who tried to conceive in each group.

In an unexpected finding, the researchers reported that the women receiving goserelin also had a significantly lower risk of dying after four years.

Dr. Jennifer Litton, a breast medical oncologist who was not involved in the study, said that was not enough survival data to recommend that goserelin be used to treat the cancers, but it at least suggested that it would not worsen the cancer outcomes if used to preserve fertility.

Still, Dr. Litton, who is with the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, said the trial was fairly small and the chances of a pregnancy were higher with egg retrieval, though the use of one technique would not preclude use of the other. “I don’t think it’s going to be the only thing I’m going to offer for fertility preservation,” she said of goserelin.

Dr. Partridge said there were differences between the new study and many of the previous ones, some of which had shown that the approach was not effective in preserving fertility.

This new trial, she said, measured pregnancy and birthrates, which are better indications of fertility than the loss of menstrual periods, a less direct measure used in many of the previous studies. Some women can lose fertility even if they continue having periods, while others can be fertile even though they do not have periods, she said.

Some of the previous studies also included women with hormone-receptor-positive cancer, meaning tumor growth is fed by estrogen. Women with that type of cancer typically take tamoxifen, which itself can cause loss of menstruation, she said.

The new study included only women with hormone-receptor-negative cancer.

Women with hormone-positive cancer take drugs to suppress estrogen or block its effects and are typically advised not to try to get pregnant for a number of years.

It is not clear why goserelin would protect the ovaries. There is some speculation that making the ovaries less active protects them from chemotherapy. The downside is that goserelin induces a temporary postmenopausal state, which can bring with it hot flashes and other symptoms.

Google’s Next Phase in Driverless Cars: No Steering Wheel or Brake Pedals

Calif. — Humans might be the one problem Google can’t solve.

For the past four years, Google has been working on self-driving cars with a mechanism to return control of the steering wheel to the driver in case of emergency. But Google’s brightest minds now say they can’t make that handoff work anytime soon.

Their answer? Take the driver completely out of the driving.

The company has begun building a fleet of 100 experimental electric-powered vehicles that will dispense with all the standard controls found in modern automobiles. The two-seat vehicle looks a bit like the ultracompact Fiat 500 or the Mercedes-Benz Smart car if you take out the steering wheel, gas pedal, brake and gear shift. The only things the driver controls is a red “e-stop” button for panic stops and a separate start button.

Video | Google’s Video of Its Self-Driving Car The company has begun building a fleet of experimental electric-powered vehicles that can’t be driven by people and are summoned with a smartphone app.

The car would be summoned with a smartphone application. It would pick up a passenger and automatically drive to a destination selected on a smartphone app without any human intervention.

Google won’t say if it intends to get into the car manufacturing business or simply supply technology to carmakers, but it says there are plenty of possibilities if it can persuade regulators to allow cars with no drivers. One potential use: driverless taxi cabs.

In an interview at Google’s headquarters here, Sergey Brin, a Google co-founder who is actively involved in the research program, said the company decided to change the car project more than a year ago after an experiment in which Google employees used autonomous vehicles for their normal commutes to work.

There were no crashes. But Google engineers realized that asking a human passenger — who could be reading or daydreaming or even sleeping — to take over in an emergency won’t work. A self-driving car Google has worked on for four years out for a spin in Mountain View, Calif.

Jason Henry for The New York Times

“We saw stuff that made us a little nervous,” said Christopher Urmson, a former Carnegie Mellon University roboticist who directs the car project at Google.

The vehicles will have electronic sensors that can see about 600 feet in all directions. Despite that, they will have rearview mirrors because they are required by California’s vehicle code, Dr. Urmson said. The front of the car will be made from a foamlike material in case the computer fails and it hits a pedestrian. It looks like a little bubble car from the future, streamlined to run by itself — a big change from the boxy Lexus SUV Google has been retrofitting the last few years with self-driving technology.

The new Google strategy for autonomous cars is a break from many competing vehicle projects. Mercedes, BMW and Volvo have introduced cars that have the ability to travel without driver intervention in limited circumstances — though none completely eliminate the driver.

That feature, which is generally known as Traffic Jam Assist, allows the car to steer and follow another vehicle in stop-and-go highway driving at low speeds. In the Mercedes version, the system disengages itself if the driver takes his hands off the steering wheel for more than 10 seconds.

Volvo said that by 2017 it planned to have the cars in the hands of ordinary consumers for testing in the streets of Gothenburg, Sweden, where the company has its headquarters.

In the interview, Mr. Brin acknowledged those advances, but said they were incremental. “That stuff seems not entirely in keeping with our mission of being transformative,” he said.

Google’s prototype for its new cars will limit them to a top speed of 25 miles per hour. The cars are intended for driving in urban and suburban settings, not on highways. The low speed will probably keep the cars out of more restrictive regulatory categories for vehicles, giving them more design flexibility.

Google is having 100 cars built by a manufacturer in the Detroit area, which it declined to name. Nor would it say how much the prototype vehicles cost. They will have a range of about 100 miles, powered by an electric motor that is roughly equivalent to the one used by Fiat’s 500e, Dr. Urmson said. They should be road-ready by early next year, Google said.

The current plan is to conduct pilot tests in California, starting with ferrying Google employees between buildings around its sprawling corporate campus here.

Laws permit autonomous vehicles in California, Nevada and Florida. But those laws have generally been written with the expectation that a human driver would be able to take control in emergencies.

Google executives said the initial prototypes would comply with current California automated-driving regulations, issued on May 20. They will have manual controls for testing on California public roads.

In the future, Google hopes to persuade regulators that the cars can operate safely without driver, steering wheel, brake or accelerator pedal. Those cars would rely entirely on Google sensors and software to control them.

So where might the driverless cars be used besides at Google’s offices?

Last year, Lawrence D. Burns, former vice president for research and development at General Motors and now a Google consultant, led a study at the Earth Institute at Columbia University on transforming personal mobility.

The researchers found that Manhattan’s 13,000 taxis made 470,000 trips a day. Their average speed was 10 to 11 m.p.h., carrying an average of 1.4 passengers per trip with an average wait time of five minutes.

In comparison, the report said, it is possible for a futuristic robot fleet of 9,000 shared automated vehicles hailed by smartphone to match that capacity with a wait time of less than one minute. Assuming a 15 percent profit, the current cost of taxi service would be about $4 per trip mile, while in contrast, it was estimated, a Manhattan-based driverless vehicle fleet would cost about 50 cents per mile.

The report showed similar savings in two other case studies — in Ann Arbor, Mich., and Babcock Ranch, a planned community in Florida.

Google is one of the few companies that could take on a challenge like that, said John J. Leonard, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology roboticist. But he added: “I do not expect there to be driverless taxis in Manhattan in my lifetime.” Mr. Brin said the change in Google’s car strategy did not mean that the company was giving up on its ultimate goal of transforming modern transportation.

“Obviously it will take time, a long time, but I think it has a lot of potential,” he said. “Self-driving cars have the potential to drive in trains much closer together and, in theory, in the future at much higher speeds.

“There is nothing to say that once you demonstrate the safety, why can’t you go 100 miles per hour?”