Kidney health better indicator of heart disease risk

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New York: Simple parameters of the kidney's functions and damage may be better at predicting the risk of heart failure and death from heart attack and stroke than traditional tests of cholesterol levels and blood pressure, new research suggests.

The data may help physicians make better decisions on whether patients need lifestyle modifications such as better diets and more exercise or treatments such as statins, medication widely used for preventing cardiovascular diseases, the study said.

'Cholesterol levels and blood pressure tests are good indicators of cardiovascular risk, but they are not perfect. This study tells us we could do even better with information that often times we are already collecting,' said study lead author Kunihiro Matsushita, assistant scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

'If healthcare providers have data on kidney damage and kidney function -- which they often do -- they should be using those data to better understand a patient's risk of cardiovascular disease,' Matsushita said.

The most common assessment of kidney function checks the blood for creatinine, a waste product of the muscles, and reflects how well the kidneys are filtering it out (called an estimated glomerular filtration rate, or GFR).

Another key test measures albuminuria, or how much of the protein albumin leaks out of the kidney and into the urine.

The researchers analysed data from 24 studies that included more than 637,000 participants with no history of cardiovascular disease and the results of tests of GFR and albuminuria.

They found that both GFR levels and albuminuria independently improved prediction of cardiovascular disease in general, particularly heart failure and death from heart attack and stroke, but albuminuria was the stronger predictor.

It outperformed cholesterol levels and systolic blood pressure - and whether someone is a smoker - as a risk factor for heart failure and death from heart attack or stroke.

The study was published in the journal Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology.

IANS

Scientists create new version of spider silk

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Washington: Spinning a major success for the textile industry, researchers have now succeeded in producing samples of spider silk in the laboratory.

Researchers have been studying for years to decode the complex structure and production of spider silk.

This study could inspire the development of new synthetic fibres -- or any materials requiring enhanced properties, such as electrical and thermal transport, in a certain direction.

It may also lead to a variety of biomedical materials -- from sutures to scaffolding for organ replacements -- made from synthesised silk with properties specifically tuned for their intended uses.

'The research, which involved a combination of simulations and experiments, paves the way for creating new fibres with improved characteristics beyond those of natural silk,' said Markus Buehler, professor of civil and environmental engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The findings will make it possible to design fibres with specific characteristics of strength, elasticity, and toughness.

The new synthetic fibre's proteins -- the basic building blocks of the material -- were created by genetically modifying bacteria to make the proteins normally produced by spiders.

These proteins were then extruded through microfluidic channels designed to mimic the effect of an organ, called a spinneret, that spiders use to produce natural silk fibres.

This project represents the first use of simulations to understand silk production at the molecular level.

'Our goal is to improve the strength, elasticity, and toughness of artificially spun fibres by borrowing bright ideas from nature,' said Shangchao Lin from MIT.

The findings appeared in Nature Communications.

Neighbour sexually assaults Keralite's wife in Mumbai

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 Mumbai: In a shocking incident, the wife of a Keralite, who was on rest after a cesarean, was brutally raped by their neighbour at Ulhas Nagar near Kalyan here.

The culprit, who is also a friend of her husband, barged into the apartment during daytime and attacked the mother of two children.

Police have arrested Jaggu Bhatia (48), proprietor of Bhatia transport, in connection with the incident.

The family alleged that the culprit is making attempts to hush up the case using money and political clout, adding that they are receiving threats demanding withdrawal of case.

The women, hailing from West Bengal, is undergoing treatment.

Militants kill 20 passengers in Pakistan

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 Islamabad: A group of unknown militants on Friday night killed at least 20 passengers after kidnapping them in Pakistan's south-western province of Balochistan, a media report said.

The incident took place when unknown militants stopped two buses and kidnapped 35 passengers in Mastung district of the province, Xinhua reported

Soon after the incident, security forces rushed to the site.

The militants killed 20 of the abducted passengers after security forces chased them and exchanged fire, said Sarfaraz Bugti, interior minister of the province.

He added that security forces rescued six of the abducted passengers and are following the militants to rescue the other passengers.

The buses were headed towards the country's southern port city of Karachi from the provincial capital of Quetta.

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif directed the authorities to rescue the remaining passengers safely.

No group has claimed responsibility for the incident as yet.

Facebook tests new security feature

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New York: Facebook has released a new feature called Security Check-up, that would be popping up into select users' News Feeds soon.

The Check-up will pop up over the top of the site, prompting users to explore a couple options you have to increase your security, reported The Verge.

From there, Facebook will walk users through password security options and show the computers logged into different Facebook services.

If anything's fishy, it should be obvious from there. Those tools were already available to Facebook users, but thanks to Security Check-up, they'll be a lot harder to miss.

Once you have logged in on a phone, that login will usually stick around until you actively turn it off. It particularly poses problem if that phone ends up lost, stolen, or just re-sold.

Login alerts send you an email any time there's a new login, while device management can show you every device that's accessed your account.

But we tend to avoid these security checks. But Security Check-up forces itself into view, encouraging the users to grapple with options they probably didn't know existed.

IANS

Prostitution costs France over $1.7 bn every year

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 Paris: The economic and social costs of prostitution in France amount to 1.6 billion euros ($1.74 billion) a year, which includes aspects such as tax evasion and medical expenses.

Some of those figures, as detailed on Thursday by the newspaper Le Parisien quoting a study by the Mouvement du Nid association, were based on previous data such as medical costs, with an estimated annual price tag between 70 million euros and 102 million euros, and others such as indirect social consequences.

Drawing from interior ministry statistics, the association found that prostitution generates annual revenue of 3.2 billion euros, but it claims that 45 percent of that sum is funneled abroad by the heads of trade networks.

Mouvement du Nid also calculated that 311 million euros was the cost of prostitution in terms of physical and sexual violence, and indirect social consequences ended up costing roughly 306 million euros, which includes the cost of homicide and suicide.

In France, according to the study, 37,000 people work in prostitution, 62 percent of them via the Internet, another 30 percent on the streets, and the remaining 8 percent in local shops or massage parlours.

Mouvement du Nid revealed in their study that calculating such services was complicated, but posited that 85 percent of prostitutes are females, another 10 percent males and the other 5 percent are transsexuals or transgenders.

IANS

Kathiroor Manoj murder: CBI summons P Jayarajan

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 Thiruvananthapuram: Senior CPM leader P Jayarajan has been summoned by the CBI to appear before investigators on June 2 in connection with an RSS activist's murder last year, CBI sources said.

Jayarajan is the Communist Party of India-Marxist's Kannur district secretary.

RSS activist K.T. Manoj, one of the people accused of making an unsuccessful bid on the life of Jayarajan in 1999, was attacked by a seven-member gang on September 1, 2014, in Kathiroor near Kannur.

His asailants first threw a bomb on the RSS activist's vehicle and later hacked him to death.

Kerala Police probed the case that was later handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to look into the conspiracy angle. So far, 19 people have been arraigned as accused.

The murder shook Kannur district, for long a hotbed for political murders on account of fierce rivalry between the CPI-M and the BJP-RSS combine.

With a BJP government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Centre, the state BJP leadership swung into action. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh went to the murdered activist's home, and soon thereafter a green signal for the CBI probe was given on the Kerala government's request.

One of the powerful CPI-M leaders, Jayarajan is being summoned by the CBI at a time when he is already out on bail in the Shukoor murder case.

Jayarajan secured bail in the case after remaining in Kannur jail for close to four weeks in August 2012.

Suicide bomber attacks Shiite mosque in Saudi, kills 4

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Damaged cars are seen after a car exploded near a Shi'ite mosque in Saudi Arabia's Dammam/REUTERS

RIYADH: The official Saudi Press Agency says a suicide bomber blew himself up near a Shiite mosque in an eastern Saudi city and killed four people.

It said the bomber tried to enter the Mosque in Dammam, a Shiite dominated city, during Friday prayers and detonated his bomb in the parking lot after being stopped by security guards. It added that guards approached the car as it was parking and that the driver detonated the bomb. It was unclear if the bomber was among the four.

It was the second attack against a Shiite mosque in Saudi. An attack last week killed 21 people and the Islamic State extremist group claimed responsibility for the attack.

AP

US starts accepting employment applications of H-4visa holders

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WASHINGTON: US authorities have started accepting employment authorization applications for H-4 visa holders, who are spouses of H-1B nonimmigrant workers and were not allowed to work so far in the country.

 

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) yesterday started accepting the applications for H-4 visas.

 

Issuing employment authorization card (EAD) to certain category of spouses of H-1B visas is one of the legislative measures taken by President Barack Obama to fix the immigration system of the country.

 

As a result, about 1,80,000 would be eligible to work in the US.

 

According to the DHS, it will issue EAD within 90 days of receiving the application.

Under existing regulations, DHS does not extend employment authorisation to dependents (also known as H-4 nonimmigrants) of H-1B nonimmigrant workers.

 

The new rules allow H-4 dependent spouses of certain H-1B nonimmigrant workers to request employment authorisation, as long as the H-1B worker has already started the process of seeking lawful permanent residence through employment.

Four of family killed in road mishap in TN

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THANJAVUR (TN): Four persons of a family, including a four-year-old boy, were killed and 11 others injured today when the van in which they were travelling collided with a lorry near here, police said.

The incident occurred at 3.45 am when 14 members of a family were returning to their native place at Porayar in Nagapattinam district after visiting Kanyakumari, they said.

Four persons travelling in the van died on the spot, police said.

The injured, including the driver of the lorry, have been admitted to a hospital