Harmful effects of Red Meat High dietary red meat intake linked to common bowel condition diverticulitis

A high dietary intake of red meat, particularly of the unprocessed variety, is linked to a heightened risk of developing the common inflammatory bowel condition, diverticulitis. Credit: © Brian Jackson / Fotolia

Replacing one daily portion with poultry or fish may lower risk, findings suggest.

A high dietary intake of red meat, particularly of the unprocessed variety, is linked to a heightened risk of developing the common inflammatory bowel condition, diverticulitis, reveals research published online in the journal Gut.

Diverticulitis occurs when the small pockets or bulges lining the intestine (diverticula) become inflamed. It is relatively common, accounting for more than 200,000 hospital admissions every year in the US at an annual cost of $US 2 billion.

New cases of the condition are on the rise, particularly among younger people. And around 4% of those affected will develop severe or long term complications, such as perforations in the gut wall, abscesses, and fistula (abnormal connections between two hollow spaces).

Yet despite its prevalence and impact, not much is known about what causes diverticulitis, although it has been linked to smoking, the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), physical inactivity, and obesity.

Insufficient dietary fibre intake is also thought to have a role, but few other dietary factors have been explored in any detail.

In a bid to rectify this, the research team assessed the potential impact of total dietary red meat, poultry, and fish intake on the risk of developing diverticulitis in nearly 46,500 men, taking part in the Health Professionals Follow up Study.

The men were all aged 40 to 75 when they joined the study between 1986 and 2012. Every four years they were asked to state how often, on average, they had eaten standard size portions of red meat, including processed meat; poultry; and fish, over the preceding year.

They were given nine options, ranging from 'never' or 'less than once a month,' to 'six or more times a day.'

During the 26 year monitoring period, some 764 men developed diverticulitis.

Those who ate higher quantities of red meat tended to use common anti-inflammatory drugs and painkillers more often; they smoked more; and they were less likely to exercise vigorously. Their fibre intake was also lower.

Those who ate more poultry and fish were more likely to exercise vigorously, take aspirin, and to smoke less.

But after taking account of these potentially influential factors, total red meat intake was associated with heightened diverticulitis risk.

Compared with the lowest levels of consumption, the highest level of red meat intake was associated with a 58% heightened risk of developing diverticulitis, with each daily serving associated with an 18% increased risk. However, risk peaked at six servings a week.

The association was strongest for unprocessed red meat, and substituting one daily portion of this with fish or poultry was associated with a 20% lowered risk.

The overall findings did not seem to be influenced by overweight or age.

Exactly how red meat intake might affect diverticulitis risk is not clear, and further research is required. But higher red meat consumption has been linked to the presence of inflammatory chemicals, such as C reactive protein and ferritin, as well as heart disease/stroke and diabetes, explain the researchers.

It's possible that the type and diversity of bacteria colonising the gut, referred to as the gut microbiome, may also have a role, with red meat consumption altering the range of bacteria, so potentially affecting immune response and the integrity of the gut lining.

And the higher cooking temperatures involved for unprocessed meat, which was more strongly associated with diverticulitis, may influence bacterial composition or inflammatory activity, venture the researchers.

This is an observational study, so no firm conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect, and the findings may have been subject to recall inaccuracies, the researchers point out.

Furthermore, as the research was only carried out in men, the findings may not be applicable to women.

Nevertheless, the researchers conclude: "Our findings may provide practical dietary guidance for patients at risk of diverticulitis, a common disease of huge economic and clinical burden."

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Materials provided by British Medical Journal. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Yin Cao, Lisa L Strate, Brieze R Keeley, Idy Tam, Kana Wu, Edward L Giovannucci, Andrew T Chan. Meat intake and risk of diverticulitis among men. Gut, 2017; gutjnl-2016-313082 DOI: 10.1136/gutjnl-2016-313082

Short-lived greenhouse gases cause centuries of sea-level rise

Researchers report that warming from short-lived compounds -- greenhouse gases such as methane and chlorofluorocarbons, that linger in the atmosphere for just a year to a few decades -- can cause sea levels to rise for hundreds of years after the pollutants have been cleared from the atmosphere. Credit: © ??????? ??????? / Fotolia

Even if there comes a day when the world completely stops emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, coastal regions and island nations will continue to experience rising sea levels for centuries afterward, according to a new study by researchers at MIT and Simon Fraser University.

In a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers report that warming from short-lived compounds -- greenhouse gases such as methane, chlorofluorocarbons, or hydrofluorocarbons, that linger in the atmosphere for just a year to a few decades -- can cause sea levels to rise for hundreds of years after the pollutants have been cleared from the atmosphere.

"If you think of countries like Tuvalu, which are barely above sea level, the question that is looming is how much we can emit before they are doomed. Are they already slated to go under, even if we stopped emitting everything tomorrow?" says co-author Susan Solomon, the Ellen Swallow Richards Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Science at MIT. "It's all the more reason why it's important to understand how long climate changes will last, and how much more sea-level rise is already locked in."

Solomon's co-authors are lead author Kirsten Zickfeld of Simon Fraser University and Daniel Gilford, a graduate student in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.

Short stay, long rise

Recent studies by many groups, including Solomon's own, have shown that even if human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide were to stop entirely, their associated atmospheric warming and sea-level rise would continue for more than 1,000 years. These effects -- essentially irreversible on human timescales -- are due in part to carbon dioxide's residence time: The greenhouse gas can stay in the atmosphere for centuries after it's been emitted from smokestacks and tailpipes.

In contrast to carbon dioxide, other greenhouse gases such as methane and chlorofluorocarbons have much shorter lifetimes. However, previous studies have not specified what their long-term effects may be on sea-level rise. To answer this question, Solomon and her colleagues explored a number of climate scenarios using an Earth Systems Model of Intermediate Complexity, or EMIC, a computationally efficient climate model that simulates ocean and atmospheric circulation to project climate changes over decades, centuries, and millenia.

With the model, the team calculated both the average global temperature and sea-level rise, in response to anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons, and hydrofluorocarbons.

The researchers' estimates for carbon dioxide agreed with others' predictions and showed that, even if the world were to stop emitting carbon dioxide starting in 2050, up to 50 percent of the gas would remain in the atmosphere more than 750 years afterward. Even after carbon dioxide emissions cease, sea-level rise should continue to increase, measuring twice the level of 2050 estimates for 100 years, and four times that value for another 500 years.

The reason, Solomon says, is due to "ocean inertia": As the world warms due to greenhouse gases -- carbon dioxide included -- waters heat up and expand, causing sea levels to rise. Removing the extra ocean heat caused by even short-lived gases, and consequently lowering sea levels, is an extremely slow process.

"As the heat goes into the ocean, it goes deeper and deeper, giving you continued thermal expansion," Solomon explains. "Then it has to get transferred back to the atmosphere and emitted back into space to cool off, and that's a very slow process of hundreds of years."

Stemming tides

In one particular climate modeling scenario, the team evaluated sea level's response to various methane emissions scenarios, in which the world would continue to emit the gas at current rates, until emissions end entirely in three different years: 2050, 2100, and 2150.

In all three scenarios, methane gas quickly cleared from the atmosphere, and its associated atmospheric warming decreased at a similar rate. However, methane continued to contribute to sea-level rise for centuries afterward. What's more, they found that the longer the world waits to reduce methane emissions, the longer seas will stay elevated.

"Amazingly, a gas with a 10-year lifetime can actually cause enduring sea-level changes," Solomon says. "So you don't just get to stop emitting and have everything go back to a preindustrial state. You are going to live with this for a very long time."

The researchers found one silver lining in their analyses: Curious as to whether past regulations on pollutants have had a significant effect on sea-level rise, the team focused on perhaps the most successful global remediation effort to date -- the Montreal Protocol, an international treaty ratified by 197 countries in 1989, that effectively curbed emissions of ozone-depleting compounds worldwide.

Encouragingly, the researchers found that the Montreal Protocol, while designed to protect the ozone layer by phasing out pollutants such as chlorofluorocarbons -- has also helped stem rising seas. If the Montreal Protocol had not been ratified, and countries had continued to emit chlorofluorocarbons to the atmosphere, the researchers found that by 2050, the world would have experienced up to an additional 6 inches of sea-level rise.

"Half a foot is pretty significant," Solomon says. "It's yet another tremendous reason why the Montreal Protocol has been a pretty good thing for the planet."

In their paper's conclusion, the researchers point out that efforts to curb global warming should not be expected to reverse high seas quickly, and that longer-term impacts from sea-level rise should be seriously considered: "The primary policy conclusion of this study is that the long-lasting nature of sea-level rise heightens the importance of earlier mitigation actions."

This research was supported, in part, by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and NASA.

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Materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Original written by Jennifer Chu. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Pakistani Hackers Hacked Indian Website Of National Security Guard (NSG)

Well, a few days back we have seen Pakistani hackers hacked Google Bangladesh domain and left some message. Now, Pakistani hackers have hijacked Indian website of National Security Guard (NSG).

The website was hacked by the group of Pakistani hackers who called themselves as “Alone Injector” and have hacked India’s anti-terrorism site nsg.gov.in and defaced it with a profanity-laden message against the Prime Minister and anti-India content.

Researchers said that the hacking attempt was spotted on the URL: www.nsg.gov.in and was immediately blocked by the counter-terror force from its headquarters. The hackers posted some offensive message on the site’s homepage.

According to Hindustan Times, “The hacker – who identified himself as ‘Alone Injector’ – was later revealed to be one Fareed Baloch. Cyber security experts said Baloch introduces himself by that title on his Facebook profile and seems to be associated with Muhammad Bilal – a self-confessed Exploiters member from Islamabad.”

The hacker claims that they are from the team of top hackers from Pakistan they are well known for “r infiltrating high-profile infrastructures”

Cyber security expert, Dhruv Soi said “Fareed Baloch put a mirror image of the defaced NSG website to show that he was the hacker involved in the act. Since the websites are resurrected immediately, defacers keep mirror images as evidence of their act.”

Dhruv Soi even claimed that ‘immature’ hackers made the hacking attempt just for publicity. They usually choose occasions like the new year, of holidays to gain more publicity.

Dhruv Soi said, “Serious hackers, on the other hand, go digging for sensitive information from cyber infrastructures by installing malware or similar tracking programs in the system.”

NSG Official said on the condition of anonymity “We are working with experts from the National Informatics Centre, and corrective steps are being taken.”

Well, this was not the first time Pakistani hackers have hacked some high-profile infrastructures. Previously, Pakistani hackers claimed to have hacked 7,000 Indian websites.

Source : techviral

Get A $100,000 Paying Job At Google By Mastering These Skills

Get A $100,000 Paying Job At Google By Mastering These Skills

Who doesn’t want to work for Google? Of course! everyone. However, getting the job from Google is not easy. You have to go through the tough interview process. Well, Google is one of the top-most empathetic company in the world and it also pays its employees very well.

Well, as we already mentioned it was not that easy to get hired by the search giant. The interns here start at $70,000 to $90,000 and the software engineers can pull in $118,000 whereas senior software engineers make an average of $152,985.

Do you know Google receives more than 2.5 million job applications per year? and out of which only 4,000 people get hired. You will need skills and talent to get a perfect job at Google. Google in education team has released a list of skills that they want to see in their potential engineers.

company says “Having a solid foundation in Computer Science is important in being a successful Software Engineer, This guide is a suggested path for University students to develop their technical skills academically and non-academically through self-paced, hands-on learning.”

So have a look at the list of skills that Google wants its tech talent to master.

#Mastering at Computer Science

Well, Google suggested to focus on basic coding instructions, you must be able to get through an introduction to CS course from online resources Udacity or Coursera

#Learn to code in (at least) one object-oriented programming language

Learn to code in (at least) one object-oriented programming language (C++, Java®, Python®). We have published an article in which we have listed some websites that will help you to learn to code simply click here to read it.

#Learn other programming languages

According to Google, you should add this language to your repertoire JavaScript, CSS & HTML, Ruby, PHP, C, Perl, Shell script, Lisp, Scheme

#Code Testing

Google wants their tech talent to learn how to catch bugs, create tests, and break your software. They have suggested Udacity for this.

#Have some background in abstract math

According to Google, you should develop logical reasoning and knowledge of discrete math and for that, you can use online resources MIT which can help you with mathematics for computer science.

#Know Operating Systems

According to Google, you need to develop a strong knowledge of operating systems because that is where you would be doing most of your work.

#Learn cryptography

You need to learn cryptography because cyber-security is the most important thing today. You can find online resources from Coursera and Udacity.

#Develop a strong understanding of algorithms and data structures

Learn about fundamental data types (stack, queues, and bags), sorting algorithms (quicksort, mergesort, heapsort), data structures (binary search trees, red-black trees, hash tables), and Big O. MIT provides the recommended online resources

#Learn artificial intelligence

Well, we all know, that Google loves robots. So, learning about artificial intelligence and machine learning is the must do the thing. Udacity will be the best place to learn artificial intelligence.

#Work with other Programmers

Google wrote that this will help you improve your ability to work well in a team and enable you to learn from others.

So, these are the ten things that Google will look for before hiring you! So, make sure to master the above-listed skills. You can read out the original post from here. Share this post with your friends too.

Source: Techviral

Malware turns PCs into eavesdropping devices

Just as the speakers in headphones turn electromagnetic signals into sound waves through a membrane’s vibrations, those membranes can also work in reverse, picking up sound vibrations and converting them back to electromagnetic signals, say authors of a new report.

Credit: © blackzheep / Fotolia

\Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) have demonstrated malware that can turn computers into perpetual eavesdropping devices, even without a microphone.

In the new paper, "SPEAKE(a)R: Turn Speakers to Microphones for Fun and Profit," the researchers explain and demonstrate how most PCs and laptops today are susceptible to this type of attack. Using SPEAKE(a)R, malware that can covertly transform headphones into a pair of microphones, they show how commonly used technology can be exploited.

"The fact that headphones, earphones and speakers are physically built like microphones and that an audio port's role in the PC can be reprogrammed from output to input creates a vulnerability that can be abused by hackers," says Prof. Yuval Elovici, director of the BGU Cyber Security Research Center (CSRC) and member of BGU's Department of Information Systems Engineering.

"This is the reason people like Facebook Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg tape up their mic and webcam," says Mordechai Guri, lead researcher and head of Research and Development at the CSRC. "You might tape the mic, but would be unlikely to tape the headphones or speakers."

A typical computer chassis contains a number of audio jacks, either in the front panel, rear panel or both. Each jack is used either for input (line-in), or for output (line-out). The audio chipsets in modern motherboards and sound cards include an option for changing the function of an audio port with software -a type of audio port programming referred to as jack retasking or jack remapping.

Malware can stealthily reconfigure the headphone jack from a line-out jack to a microphone jack, making the connected headphones function as a pair of recording microphones and turning the computer into an eavesdropping device. This works even when the computer doesn't have a connected microphone, as demonstrated in the SPEAKE(a)R video.

The BGU researchers studied several attack scenarios to evaluate the signal quality of simple off-the-shelf headphones. "We demonstrated is possible to acquire intelligible audio through earphones up to several meters away," said Dr. Yosef Solewicz, an acoustic researcher at the BGU CSRC.

Potential software countermeasures include completely disabling audio hardware, using an HD audio driver to alert users when microphones are being accessed, and developing and enforcing a strict rejacking policy within the industry. Anti-malware and intrusion detection systems could also be developed to monitor and detect unauthorized speaker-to-mic retasking operations and block them.

See more at: pdf" href="http://cyber.bgu.ac.il/advanced-cyber/system/files/SPEAKEaR.pdf">http://cyber.bgu.ac.il/advanced-cyber/system/files/SPEAKEaR.pdf

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Materials provided by American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Your microbiota's previous dining experiences may make new diets less effective

This visual abstract depicts the findings of Griffin et al. that the magnitude of microbiota responses to diet interventions varies among individuals. Dispersal of diet-responsive bacterial taxa between hosts enhance subsequent responses to diet interventions.

Credit: Griffin et al. / Cell Host & Microbe

Your microbiota may not be on your side as you try improving your diet this New Year's. In a study published December 29 in Cell Host & Microbe, researchers explore why mice that switch from an unrestricted American diet to a healthy, calorie-restricted, plant-based diet don't have an immediate response to their new program. They found that certain human gut bacteria need to be lost for a diet plan to be successful.

"If we are to prescribe a diet to improve someone's health, it's important that we understand what microbes help control those beneficial effects," says Jeffrey Gordon, Director of the Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology at Washington University in St. Louis and senior author of the paper. "And we've found a way to mine the gut microbial communities of different humans to identify the organisms that help promote the effects of a particular diet in ways that might be beneficial."

In order to study how human dietary practices influence the human gut microbiota and how a microbiota conditioned with one dietary lifestyle responds to a new prescribed diet, Gordon and his collaborators first took fecal samples from people who followed a calorie-restricted, plant-rich diet and samples from people who followed a typical, unrestricted American diet. The researchers found that people who followed the restricted, plant-rich diet had a more diverse microbiota.

They then colonized groups of germ-free mice with the different human donors' gut communities and fed the animals the donor's native diet or the other diet type. Although both groups of mice responded to their new diets, mice with the American diet-conditioned microbiota had a weaker response to the plant-rich diet.

To identify microbes that could enhance the response of the American diet-conditioned microbiota, the researchers set up a series of staged encounters between mice. Animals harboring American diet-conditioned human gut communities were sequentially co-housed with mice colonized with microbiota from different people who had consumed the plant-rich diet for long periods of time. Microbes from the plant diet-conditioned communities made their way into the American diet-conditioned microbiota, markedly improving its response to the plant diet.

"We need to think of our gut microbial communities not as isolated islands but as parts of an archipelago where bacteria can move from island to island. We call this archipelago a metacommunity," says first author Nicholas Griffin, an instructor at WUSTL. "Many of these bacteria that migrated into the American diet-conditioned microbiota were initially absent in many people consuming this non-restricted diet."

Although the scientists are optimistic that their approach will help guide the development of new strategies for improving the effectiveness of prescribing healthy diets, they emphasize that more research is needed to identify the factors that determine the exchange of microbes between people.

"We have an increasing appreciation for how nutritional value and the effects of diets are impacted by a consumer's microbiota," says Gordon. "We hope that microbes identified using approaches such as those described in this study may one day be used as next-generation probiotics. Our microbes provide another way of underscoring how we humans are connected we are to one another as members of a larger community."

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Materials provided by Cell Press. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

10 Reasons to Stop Eating Beef (and other Fast Food)

by Jonathan Campbell
Beef-eating is portrayed in the U.S. almost as a patriotic endeavor. Our favorite sports heroes - from Michael Jordan to Drew Bledsoe - are featured in McDonalds ads and toys. We are literally bombarded with ads for McDonalds, Burger King, and Wendy's. But there is something very odd about all this. There are hints (or front page headlines) telling us that there is something wrong with all this beef consumption.
In fact, a quick study of the issues surrounding beef consumption finds some very disturbing facts:
1. Beef contains significant quantities of the most toxic organic chemical known - dioxin. This chemical is toxic in the trillionths of grams. (A trillionth of a gram, called a picogram, is one million millionth of a gram. A gram is about 1/30th of an ounce.) Dioxin has been linked to cancer, endometriosis, Attention Deficit Disorder (hyperactivity in children), reproductive systems defects in children, chronic fatigue syndrome, immune system deficiency, and rare nerve and blood disorders. A single hamburger (a little less than 1/4 lb, or 100 grams) contains up to 100 picograms of dioxin. That is 300 times as much as the EPA says is "acceptable" for a daily dose for an adult! There are some scientists who say that there is no acceptable dose; they say that any dose can cause toxic effects, because dioxin is a hormone disrupting chemical which changes the functioning of our cells, against which we have no defense. The dioxin comes from microscopic particles of ash from incinerators that have settled on grass and crops eaten by the beef cattle, pigs, and chickens. All farm animals are affected - even herds grown on "all-natural" feed. See dioxin.
2. The huge amount of beef that we consume, in combination with the usual side-orders of other fatty foods (such as french fries) and caffeine and refined sugars (cola beverages) appears to be one of the major causes of obesity in the U.S. and Europe. Beef is "dumped" into our schools by the beef industry and the USDA - beef producers are paid by the government for "surplus" beef (the vast amount they cannot sell) which is subsequently "donated" to school lunch programs, helping our children to get hooked on this unhealthy food.
3. Beef production is the major cause of the destruction of the world's rainforests. The high price of beef encourages ranchers to burn the forest to create new rangelands. The fragile, thin rainforest soil cover is quickly destroyed by grazing in 1-2 years, and the ranchers move on to burn another area, in a never-ending cycle of destruction. Thousands of species of plants and animals have already been destroyed forever, as well as straining the earth's ability to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen. At current rates, the rainforests will be totally destroyed in 30-50 years.
4. Beef production is the major cause of "desertification" around the world - the rapid degradation of marginal, low-rainfall soil areas into desert. The constant pounding of the hoofs of cattle disturbs and eventually destroys the delicate root systems which keep the topsoil layer intact. Erosion by winds or storms removes the topsoil, leaving the sand or clay subsoil layer behind.
5. Beef production is a serious social justice issue. Beef cattle and their grazing land take up nearly a quarter of the land mass of the earth, to supply beef to the U.S., Europe, and Japan. About one third of the world's grain harvest is used for feed for cattle instead of food for people. In the U.S., that figure is over 70 percent. It takes 16 pounds of grain to produce a single pound of beef. This, in a world where nearly a billion people lack enough food, is unjust. Beef production for the developed parts of the world is severely limiting the amount of food available for people in the poor and developing world.
6. Beef can harbor a deadly new germ, called e. coli O157:H7. This new germ is now a major cause of serious food poisoning. Beef and dairy cattle can carry the germ with no apparent adverse health effects. The germ, found in cattle feces, has contaminated beef and produce grown with cow manure. So far it has killed dozens of people and sickened thousands. In August, 1997, 25 million pounds of beef were recalled, the largest food recall in the world's history, because of O157:H7 contamination of beef destined to Burger King restaurants. The precautions against the germ - including cooking to 160º F (71º C) - reveals a disgusting side of beef production - there is no way to prevent fecal contamination during slaughter. See O157:H7.
7. The consumption of beef and fast food "restaurants" that promote it have created a new, super-exploitative work environment. High school students and people in poverty have learned an old social order - the sweatshop. The frenetic pace of a McDonalds or Burger King at lunch or dinner time is easily a match for the non-unionized factories and garment shops of the '20s in the U.S. (or most developing countries today). But this is the modern U.S. sweatshop, where we are all members of a "team" working for the common good - minimum wages and windfall profits.
8. Beef consumption has created a self-perpetuating and rapidly-expanding distortion of local economies all over the world. As more McDonalds "restaurants" are established and beef consumption rises, more arable land is consumed for grazing and cattle feed. In developing countries, the local economy changes from one based on local food markets and trade to one based on beef exports, enriching a few wealthy landowners and merchants and impoverishing the rest.
9. The "fast-food" industry giants that promote beef - McDonalds, Burger King, and Wendy's - have created and encouraged an artificial, plastic, uniform, standard "restaurant" environment that, because of their powerful advertising media, discourages diversity and local and ethnic culture in restaurants and in food choices. Beef - served as hamburgers - has been the driving force for this shift in how we view food and eating in the U. S.
10. The beef "fast-food" industry, notably McDonalds and Burger King, especially targets children in its marketing. As a result, millions of children (and in many cases, their parents) associate eating at those "restaurants" as a fun, positive, healthful eating experience. Obesity and other afflictions associated with excess animal fat intake and sedentary lifestyle are now affecting young adults and children in increasing numbers.
Sources: 1994 EPA Dioxin Reassessment, Dying From Dioxin by Lois Gibbs, Beyond Beef by Jeremy Rifkin, fact sheets from the McLibel case (Great Britain), Diet For A Small Planet by Francis Moore Lappe, Mother Jones magazine.