Want to live healthy, long life? Get 60 minutes physical activity daily

• Written by CHUKWUMA MUANYA

The recently launched 2013 Nigerian Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth, Nestlé’s Healthy Kids Global Programme and other current studies are unanimous that at least 60 minutes of moderate to 
vigorous physical activity daily will not only reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases such as obesity, high blood pressure, cancer, diabetes but exposure to bad behaviours such as smoking, unprotected sex and violence. CHUKWUMA MUANYA writes.
THE verdict is out: Regular physical activity from childhood and youth has strong positive effects on health throughout life by preventing the onset of chronic and non communicable diseases (NCDs) such as hypertension, diabetes, cancer, and the resultant disabilities and premature deaths.
        The 2013 Nigerian Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth, prepared and produced by the Nigerian Heart Foundation (NHF) reads: “Physical activity is important for the health and general development of children and youth, and the attitude of physical inactivity portends a great danger for this population. It has been documented that physical inactivity and low levels of physical activity are predisposing factors to many chronic diseases.
       “An increase in the prevalence of cardiovascular diseases among Nigerian adolescents has been previously reported, and the treand of declined usage of active mode of transportation arising from the proliferation of fairly used imported cars, locally known as Tokunbo, and operation of motor bikes, Okada, for commercial purpose has also been documented.
       “For health gains, it has been recommended that children and youth should accumulate at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity daily, however, physical activity greater than 60 minutes provides additional health benefits.”
      Executive Director NHF, Dr. Kingsley Akinroye, said: “We hope this report card will initiate a thrust for action on the pivotal role of physical activity in the promotion of the health of Nigerians especially in the fight against NCDs.”
      Also, Nestlé, the world’s leading nutrition, health and wellness company, is actively addressing the pressing issues of obesity and under-nutrition in Central and West Africa and worldwide.
      According to Nestle, in youngsters, a lack of physical activity and bad dietary habits may lead to obesity. At the same time, the absence of vital micronutrients such as vitamin A, zinc, iron or iodine can cause stunting in growth and a lower resistance to infection.
          To help tackle these prevalent problems, Nestlé launched its Healthy Kids Global Programme aimed at children aged six to 12 in 2009.
        The programme aims to help counteract these widespread trends by promoting nutrition education, good nutritional practices, healthy lifestyles and physical activity amongst schoolchildren.
        Its approach is based on worldwide multi-stakeholder partnerships such as national and local governments, non- governmental organizations, nutrition health institutes or sport federations.
        Two years after its global launch, Nestlé extended the initiative to the Central and West Africa region, starting with Nigeria and Ghana.
      To further develop the physical activity side of the initiative, children are taking part in one physical activity class each week.
      Nestlé teamed up with its global partner, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), in Nigeria in 2013, and the Athletics Federation of Nigeria, to further develop the programme and promote athletics in schools.
        The company has also implemented its Kids Athletics Programme through the Ghana Athletics Association, the local entity that is working with the IAAF.
     In 2013, Nestlé carried out its first monitoring and evaluation of the Healthy Kids Programme in Nigeria with the Human Nutrition Department at the University of Ibadan.
       Results showed that participating schoolchildren significantly improved their eating habits and physical activity behaviour.
      The Nestlé Healthy Kids Global Programme is part of the company’s approach to business, which it calls ‘Creating Shared Value’. It is part of Nestlé’s commitment to promote healthy diets and encourage active lifestyles and physical activity.
        NHF and Nestle are supported by a research published over the weekend in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, which suggests that, from age 30, physical inactivity has the biggest impact on certain risk factors - such as excess weight, smoking and high blood pressure- in women.
      These risk factors are known to increase lifetime risk of developing heart disease in women.
       The researchers used data on 32,254 participants in the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health, which tracks the long-term health of women born in certain spans of time between 1921 and 1978.
        Also, a new research published in Diabetologia indicates that brief bursts of intense exercise before meals (termed exercise ‘snacking’ by the study authors) helps control blood sugar in people with insulin resistance more effectively than one daily 30-minute session of moderate exercise.
      Diabetologia is the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes.   
        The research was conducted by exercise science and medicine researchers, including Monique Francois, and Associate Professor James Cotter from the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. 
                           Get moving: researchers found low levels of physical activity had the greatest impact on women’s heart disease risks. The investigators observed that smoking prevalence fell from 28 per cent in women 22-27 years old to five per cent in those between the ages of 73 and 78.
        However, inactivity prevalence and high blood pressure increased across their lifespans, from age 22 to 90, and overweight prevalence increased between the ages of 22 and 64, declining after those ages.
       The team then combined prevalence with relative risk data - which reveals the likelihood that a woman with a specific risk factor will develop heart disease, compared with a woman without that risk factor.
      After combining this data, the researchers observed that, until the age of 30, smoking had the greatest influence on heart disease risk.
      Between the ages of 30 and 90, however, low physical activity levels had the greatest effect on higher levels of population risk, compared with any of the other risk factors, the team found.
       The World Health Organization (WHO) recommend that all adults get 150 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity each week, and the researchers say if every woman between 30 and 90 were to reach this recommendation, then more than 2,000 middle-aged and older women’s lives would be saved in Australia each year.
     Based on their results, the researchers say the effect of different risk factors on chances of developing heart disease change throughout a woman’s life.
      The researchers added: “Our data suggest that national programs for the promotion and maintenance of physical activity, across the adult lifespan, but especially in young adulthood, deserve to be a much higher public health priority for women than they are now.”
       Though they note that reducing smoking in young women is important, more focus should be put on keeping physically active; the main focus has been on obesity and BMI, they said.
      Meanwhile, the Diabetologia study used a cross-over design, meaning that each participant acts as their own control, and questions can be answered with a much smaller number of participants. Nine individuals (two women, seven men) were recruited. All had blood test results showing insulin resistance, were not on cardiovascular or diabetic medication, were aged 18 to 55 years (mean age 48), and had a mean BMI 36 kg/m2. They included two newly diagnosed type 2 diabetics only detected as part of the screening.
        The participants completed three separate exercise interventions in randomised order. Measures were recorded across three days with exercise performed on the middle day, as either: (1) traditional continuous exercise (CONT), comprising one 30 min moderate-intensity (60% of maximal heart rate) session of incline walking before dinner (evening meal) only; (2) exercise snacking (ES), consisting of 6×1 min intense (90 per cent maximal heart rate) incline walking intervals finishing 30 min before breakfast, lunch and dinner, with one minute slow walking recovery time after each minute of intense exercise; or composite exercise snacking (CES), encompassing 6×1 min intervals alternating between walking and resistance-based exercise (with a one-minute slow walking recovery minute after each minute of exercise), again finishing 30 min before breakfast lunch and dinner. ES and CONT were matched for energy usage, whereas ES and CES were matched for time but CES provided a brief workout for all of the body’s major muscle groups across the day. Meal timing and composition were the same for all three exercise interventions, and monitored using diet records, daily verbal discussion, and dietary analysis software.
       Female participants completed the trials in the early follicular phase of their menstrual cycle (across three separate cycles), whereas male participants had a minimum of seven days between trials.
        The researchers found that the ES and CES routines controlled blood sugar more effectively than the CONT routine, particularly 3-hour post-meal glucose following breakfast (17 per cent reduction compared to no exercise) and dinner (13 per cent reduction compared to CONT). Across the day this represented a 12 per cent reduction in mean post-meal blood glucose concentration. The effect of the pre-lunch ES on blood glucose levels after lunch was unclear. Moreover, the reductions in blood glucose with ES compared to CONT persisted for a further 24 hours across the day following exercise.
       While acknowledging that further work is required to determine the clinical significance of their study, the authors say their work adds to the recent interest in ‘accumulating physical activity’ as brief, repetitive bouts of intense exercise (as opposed to a single, prolonged, continuous exercise session) to prevent cardiometabolic disease. Many international guidelines prescribe exercise to maintain health (for example 30 min of moderate exercise 5 times a week), but such regimes still leave many people with prolonged sedentary time or inactivity, which has already been highlighted in previous research as harmful to health. Previous research has also shown more frequent breaks in sedentary time are beneficial for waist circumference, blood glucose control and other metabolic parameters.
         Exercise ‘snacking’, whether before meals or not, provides breaks in sedentary time, and thus may be important for public health. In this study, 30 min of moderate-intensity exercise (CONT) did not improve blood sugar control, whereas distributing the same volume of exercise as three brief pre-meal HIT ‘exercise snacks’ resulted in a mean 12% reduction in the average post-meal glucose level (the mean across the three meals), an effect that was also sustained across the subsequent day. Walking-based (ES) and combined-exercise (CES) snacks improved blood sugar control similarly, and both forms of exercise involved similar levels of exertion in the nine patients. In this study ES lowered 24-hour glucose levels relative to the control day, whereas CONT did not. Although compared to the control day ES was more effective than CONT on the day after exercise (subsequent 24 hour), on that day the 24-hour mean glucose for ES was not statistically significantly lower than CONT.
      Other research focussing on several weeks of interval training versus continuous exercise has found that interval exercise every second day is just as effective as continuous exercise every day, despite the significantly lower volume of exercise. The current study and others show that if the exercise is intense, it may only need to be performed every second day, further adding to the time efficient nature of this interval exercise.
       “The notion of doing small amounts of interval exercise before meals is a unique and very important feature of this study,” says Francois. “Sustained hyperglycaemia following meals is an important feature of insulin resistance. Reducing these post-meal spikes is important for reducing the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and its associated complications.”
      She added: “Dosing these small amounts of high intensity exercise before meals (particularly breakfast and dinner) may be a more time efficient way to get exercise into people’s day, rather than devoting a large chunk of the day.”
      She concluded: “We found exercise snacking to be a novel and effective approach to improve blood sugar control in individuals with insulin resistance. Brief, intense interval exercise bouts undertaken immediately before breakfast, lunch and dinner had a greater impact on post-meal and subsequent 24 h glucose concentrations than did a single bout of moderate, continuous exercise undertaken before an evening meal. The practical implications of our findings are that, for individuals who are insulin resistant and who experience marked post-meal increases in blood glucose, both the timing and the intensity of exercise should be considered for optimising glucose control.”
         The researchers are continuing the work in this area, and are set to publish further studies, including one other acute 24 hour response to high-intensity exercise using different forms of exercise in younger sedentary individuals, and a longer-term training study on other health-related measures. They also plan to study such exercise targeting younger insulin-resistant individuals.

Want to live healthy, long life? Get 60 minutes physical activity daily

• Written by CHUKWUMA MUANYA

The recently launched 2013 Nigerian Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth, Nestlé’s Healthy Kids Global Programme and other current studies are unanimous that at least 60 minutes of moderate to 
vigorous physical activity daily will not only reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases such as obesity, high blood pressure, cancer, diabetes but exposure to bad behaviours such as smoking, unprotected sex and violence. CHUKWUMA MUANYA writes.
THE verdict is out: Regular physical activity from childhood and youth has strong positive effects on health throughout life by preventing the onset of chronic and non communicable diseases (NCDs) such as hypertension, diabetes, cancer, and the resultant disabilities and premature deaths.
        The 2013 Nigerian Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth, prepared and produced by the Nigerian Heart Foundation (NHF) reads: “Physical activity is important for the health and general development of children and youth, and the attitude of physical inactivity portends a great danger for this population. It has been documented that physical inactivity and low levels of physical activity are predisposing factors to many chronic diseases.
       “An increase in the prevalence of cardiovascular diseases among Nigerian adolescents has been previously reported, and the treand of declined usage of active mode of transportation arising from the proliferation of fairly used imported cars, locally known as Tokunbo, and operation of motor bikes, Okada, for commercial purpose has also been documented.
       “For health gains, it has been recommended that children and youth should accumulate at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity daily, however, physical activity greater than 60 minutes provides additional health benefits.”
      Executive Director NHF, Dr. Kingsley Akinroye, said: “We hope this report card will initiate a thrust for action on the pivotal role of physical activity in the promotion of the health of Nigerians especially in the fight against NCDs.”
      Also, Nestlé, the world’s leading nutrition, health and wellness company, is actively addressing the pressing issues of obesity and under-nutrition in Central and West Africa and worldwide.
      According to Nestle, in youngsters, a lack of physical activity and bad dietary habits may lead to obesity. At the same time, the absence of vital micronutrients such as vitamin A, zinc, iron or iodine can cause stunting in growth and a lower resistance to infection.
          To help tackle these prevalent problems, Nestlé launched its Healthy Kids Global Programme aimed at children aged six to 12 in 2009.
        The programme aims to help counteract these widespread trends by promoting nutrition education, good nutritional practices, healthy lifestyles and physical activity amongst schoolchildren.
        Its approach is based on worldwide multi-stakeholder partnerships such as national and local governments, non- governmental organizations, nutrition health institutes or sport federations.
        Two years after its global launch, Nestlé extended the initiative to the Central and West Africa region, starting with Nigeria and Ghana.
      To further develop the physical activity side of the initiative, children are taking part in one physical activity class each week.
      Nestlé teamed up with its global partner, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), in Nigeria in 2013, and the Athletics Federation of Nigeria, to further develop the programme and promote athletics in schools.
        The company has also implemented its Kids Athletics Programme through the Ghana Athletics Association, the local entity that is working with the IAAF.
     In 2013, Nestlé carried out its first monitoring and evaluation of the Healthy Kids Programme in Nigeria with the Human Nutrition Department at the University of Ibadan.
       Results showed that participating schoolchildren significantly improved their eating habits and physical activity behaviour.
      The Nestlé Healthy Kids Global Programme is part of the company’s approach to business, which it calls ‘Creating Shared Value’. It is part of Nestlé’s commitment to promote healthy diets and encourage active lifestyles and physical activity.
        NHF and Nestle are supported by a research published over the weekend in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, which suggests that, from age 30, physical inactivity has the biggest impact on certain risk factors - such as excess weight, smoking and high blood pressure- in women.
      These risk factors are known to increase lifetime risk of developing heart disease in women.
       The researchers used data on 32,254 participants in the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health, which tracks the long-term health of women born in certain spans of time between 1921 and 1978.
        Also, a new research published in Diabetologia indicates that brief bursts of intense exercise before meals (termed exercise ‘snacking’ by the study authors) helps control blood sugar in people with insulin resistance more effectively than one daily 30-minute session of moderate exercise.
      Diabetologia is the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes.   
        The research was conducted by exercise science and medicine researchers, including Monique Francois, and Associate Professor James Cotter from the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. 
                           Get moving: researchers found low levels of physical activity had the greatest impact on women’s heart disease risks. The investigators observed that smoking prevalence fell from 28 per cent in women 22-27 years old to five per cent in those between the ages of 73 and 78.
        However, inactivity prevalence and high blood pressure increased across their lifespans, from age 22 to 90, and overweight prevalence increased between the ages of 22 and 64, declining after those ages.
       The team then combined prevalence with relative risk data - which reveals the likelihood that a woman with a specific risk factor will develop heart disease, compared with a woman without that risk factor.
      After combining this data, the researchers observed that, until the age of 30, smoking had the greatest influence on heart disease risk.
      Between the ages of 30 and 90, however, low physical activity levels had the greatest effect on higher levels of population risk, compared with any of the other risk factors, the team found.
       The World Health Organization (WHO) recommend that all adults get 150 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity each week, and the researchers say if every woman between 30 and 90 were to reach this recommendation, then more than 2,000 middle-aged and older women’s lives would be saved in Australia each year.
     Based on their results, the researchers say the effect of different risk factors on chances of developing heart disease change throughout a woman’s life.
      The researchers added: “Our data suggest that national programs for the promotion and maintenance of physical activity, across the adult lifespan, but especially in young adulthood, deserve to be a much higher public health priority for women than they are now.”
       Though they note that reducing smoking in young women is important, more focus should be put on keeping physically active; the main focus has been on obesity and BMI, they said.
      Meanwhile, the Diabetologia study used a cross-over design, meaning that each participant acts as their own control, and questions can be answered with a much smaller number of participants. Nine individuals (two women, seven men) were recruited. All had blood test results showing insulin resistance, were not on cardiovascular or diabetic medication, were aged 18 to 55 years (mean age 48), and had a mean BMI 36 kg/m2. They included two newly diagnosed type 2 diabetics only detected as part of the screening.
        The participants completed three separate exercise interventions in randomised order. Measures were recorded across three days with exercise performed on the middle day, as either: (1) traditional continuous exercise (CONT), comprising one 30 min moderate-intensity (60% of maximal heart rate) session of incline walking before dinner (evening meal) only; (2) exercise snacking (ES), consisting of 6×1 min intense (90 per cent maximal heart rate) incline walking intervals finishing 30 min before breakfast, lunch and dinner, with one minute slow walking recovery time after each minute of intense exercise; or composite exercise snacking (CES), encompassing 6×1 min intervals alternating between walking and resistance-based exercise (with a one-minute slow walking recovery minute after each minute of exercise), again finishing 30 min before breakfast lunch and dinner. ES and CONT were matched for energy usage, whereas ES and CES were matched for time but CES provided a brief workout for all of the body’s major muscle groups across the day. Meal timing and composition were the same for all three exercise interventions, and monitored using diet records, daily verbal discussion, and dietary analysis software.
       Female participants completed the trials in the early follicular phase of their menstrual cycle (across three separate cycles), whereas male participants had a minimum of seven days between trials.
        The researchers found that the ES and CES routines controlled blood sugar more effectively than the CONT routine, particularly 3-hour post-meal glucose following breakfast (17 per cent reduction compared to no exercise) and dinner (13 per cent reduction compared to CONT). Across the day this represented a 12 per cent reduction in mean post-meal blood glucose concentration. The effect of the pre-lunch ES on blood glucose levels after lunch was unclear. Moreover, the reductions in blood glucose with ES compared to CONT persisted for a further 24 hours across the day following exercise.
       While acknowledging that further work is required to determine the clinical significance of their study, the authors say their work adds to the recent interest in ‘accumulating physical activity’ as brief, repetitive bouts of intense exercise (as opposed to a single, prolonged, continuous exercise session) to prevent cardiometabolic disease. Many international guidelines prescribe exercise to maintain health (for example 30 min of moderate exercise 5 times a week), but such regimes still leave many people with prolonged sedentary time or inactivity, which has already been highlighted in previous research as harmful to health. Previous research has also shown more frequent breaks in sedentary time are beneficial for waist circumference, blood glucose control and other metabolic parameters.
         Exercise ‘snacking’, whether before meals or not, provides breaks in sedentary time, and thus may be important for public health. In this study, 30 min of moderate-intensity exercise (CONT) did not improve blood sugar control, whereas distributing the same volume of exercise as three brief pre-meal HIT ‘exercise snacks’ resulted in a mean 12% reduction in the average post-meal glucose level (the mean across the three meals), an effect that was also sustained across the subsequent day. Walking-based (ES) and combined-exercise (CES) snacks improved blood sugar control similarly, and both forms of exercise involved similar levels of exertion in the nine patients. In this study ES lowered 24-hour glucose levels relative to the control day, whereas CONT did not. Although compared to the control day ES was more effective than CONT on the day after exercise (subsequent 24 hour), on that day the 24-hour mean glucose for ES was not statistically significantly lower than CONT.
      Other research focussing on several weeks of interval training versus continuous exercise has found that interval exercise every second day is just as effective as continuous exercise every day, despite the significantly lower volume of exercise. The current study and others show that if the exercise is intense, it may only need to be performed every second day, further adding to the time efficient nature of this interval exercise.
       “The notion of doing small amounts of interval exercise before meals is a unique and very important feature of this study,” says Francois. “Sustained hyperglycaemia following meals is an important feature of insulin resistance. Reducing these post-meal spikes is important for reducing the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and its associated complications.”
      She added: “Dosing these small amounts of high intensity exercise before meals (particularly breakfast and dinner) may be a more time efficient way to get exercise into people’s day, rather than devoting a large chunk of the day.”
      She concluded: “We found exercise snacking to be a novel and effective approach to improve blood sugar control in individuals with insulin resistance. Brief, intense interval exercise bouts undertaken immediately before breakfast, lunch and dinner had a greater impact on post-meal and subsequent 24 h glucose concentrations than did a single bout of moderate, continuous exercise undertaken before an evening meal. The practical implications of our findings are that, for individuals who are insulin resistant and who experience marked post-meal increases in blood glucose, both the timing and the intensity of exercise should be considered for optimising glucose control.”
         The researchers are continuing the work in this area, and are set to publish further studies, including one other acute 24 hour response to high-intensity exercise using different forms of exercise in younger sedentary individuals, and a longer-term training study on other health-related measures. They also plan to study such exercise targeting younger insulin-resistant individuals.

Military arrests 486 suspected Boko Haram members in Abia

• S’East govs meet Jonathan, say terrorists  can’t get to zone
NOT less than 486 suspected insurgents including eight females were said to have been arrested by the military personnel of the 144 battalion of the Nigerian Army with base at Asa in Ukwa West council of Abia State.
   But South East governors have ruled out the possibility of terrorist group, Boko Haram, spreading to the region.
  Anambra State Governor Willie Obiano disclosed the position of his colleagues from the region while speaking with State House correspondents after paying a “solidarity visit” to President Goodluck Jonathan in his office yesterday.
  Abia State Information Commissioner, Chief Eze Chikamnayo, who took some reporters to the military camp yesterday to see the suspects said they were arrested around 3:00 a.m. on Sunday along Enugu-Aba-Port Harcourt Expressway at  Arongwa area called Imo Gate, which is a boundary between Abia and Rivers states.
   He said that the suspects whose ages were from 15 years were traveling on 35 buses from undisclosed northern states to the South South.  He said that they claimed to be going to search for jobs, adding that two of the buses later escaped.
   The commissioner spoke in the presence of the Battalion Commander, Lt. Colonel Rasheed Omolori, whose only comment was that the report had already been sent to his headquarter.
   It was also disclosed that somebody whose name was not made known, had come to secure the release of the suspects but was arrested and detained.
  The commissioner urged members of the public to be more security conscious and report strange persons and suspects to the security agencies.
   Reacting to the incident, the state Police Public Relations Officer ( PPRO),  Mr. Geoffery Ogbonna,  said  that  the matter was a military one and had not been reported to the police command.
   He said that when he contacted the Army Public Relations Officer in the state whose name he did not mention, he told him  ( PPRO)  that he was not yet aware  of  the matter. 
  And following the bomb found on the premises and inside the Living Faith Church (a.k.a Winners Chapel), Port Harcourt Road, Owerri, capital city of Imo State, the Imo State Governor, Rochas Okorocha,  in conjunction with security chiefs yesterday launched what he called “Operation Know Your Neighbour.”
  The occasion was attended by a cross section of stakeholders in the state amid heavy security.
  The meeting resolved as follows:
“. Hotels in the state should install security cameras and on daily basis always forward the list of their guests to the Director of SSS.
 “. Trailers bringing food items from the North would no longer be allowed to come into the state at night but only in the day, and the food items would be off-loaded at a designated place off the state capital.
 “. Residents in the state must also be careful with broken bottles, cans, leather bags, parked tankers and vehicles around their homes, public places and public buildings.
“.  Traditional rulers in the state were directed to summon emergency meetings of their various communities to take stock of strange faces living with them.
 “. Uncompleted buildings in the cities in the state and environs without security guards will be taken over by the government because criminals use them as hideouts.
“. Lands left fallow for several years and not used for any economic or gainful purpose but taken over by criminals will be seized by the government
“. Smoking of Indian hemp was also banned.
“.  A meeting of all non-indigenes in the state has also been fixed.”
  Obiano’s comments came as a response to a  statement credited to Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State last week and  improvised explosive devises (IED) believed to have been discovered in a church in Owerri, the Imo State capital on Sunday0.
    Other governors who were seen included those of Abia, Chief Theordore Orji; Enugu, Sullivan Chime and Ebonyi, Martins Elechi. Okorocha of Imo State was absent.
     Asked if the governors of the South East were concerned about the possibility of Boko Haram spreading to their zone, Obiano said the terrorists could not get to the area. Besides, the governor would not be drawn into the issue of the bomb incident in Owerri, until he was availed of the facts.
  “No, they can’t get there; I can assure you of that. We will not allow that to happen. I can’t tell you in any material details about bombs found or not found. All I can assure you is that we are very alert in the South East and we are watching what is going on. But I can assure that Boko Haram cannot come to the South East.”
   Defending the visit of the governors to the president, the Anambra chief executive said it was intended to give him moral support, and denied that it was linked to the forthcoming general elections.
  His words: “The president is a human being and he is under a lot of pressure and some other people are making the work a lot more difficult for him. Instead of supporting him to steer us out of these stormy waters, they are adding kerosene to fire. So we are here to tell him that we are supporting him and that he should count on us.”
    The governor said the state government was working with the World Bank to tackle the erosion ravaging some parts of the state.
   “The World Bank and the state government are working on a lot of erosion sites already. They have expanded the four erosion sites they are working on currently to 12; so they are adding eight more erosion sites. I believe that this intervention which is 50/50 per cent contribution will go a long way in helping to tackle the erosion sites we have in the state.
  “We are also tackling erosion from the legal point of view. Bush burning will no longer be allowed, so also is cutting roads to lay pipes to houses. These are some of the factors that lead to erosion. We want people to do the necessary things that they should do; we want people to stop termination of drainages abruptly. We are putting a law in place to ensure that anybody that violates the law will face the consequences.”
  Besides, barely a week after foiling multiple attacks on Bitta and other villages in Borno State, troops of 7 Division of  the Nigerian Army  in Maiduguri, have  arrested 14 Boko Haram terror suspects, following “intelligence reports” from residents on the infiltration of terror suspects into  the metropolis from Gwoza and Damboa that were recently attacked by insurgents.
   The arrest, according to military sources in Maiduguri, was made at the weekend on Baga road when a commercial tricycle driver was stopped at a timber shed near an NNPC mega station after the alarm was raised by one of the passengers that “a Boko Haram suspect is among us in this tricycle. This man participated in the serial border attacks in Gwoza East, where many people were killed last week.”
     The alarm attracted the attention of soldiers at one of the military posts who quickly intervened to investigate the alleged identification of a suspect in a tricycle heading towards the Post Office area.
  The identified suspect, according to one of the passengers, disguised in a long robe and carried a black polythene bag. He allegedly confessed to the military that he was among other terror suspects that travelled to Maiduguri to collate more information about military operations and patrol in the city.
   Asked to further identify the suspect, the passenger said: “This suspect among our midst in this Keke Napep was the one that killed my brother in Gwoza last week.”
   After the identity of the suspect was unveiled before soldiers, the suspect said: “Don’t kill me, there are other members that participated in
Gwoza East and Damboa attacks. If you kill me today (Sunday) you will not be able to identify the hideouts of other suspects in Maiduguri.”
   It was learnt that after the suspect was taken away by soldiers in their patrol vehicle to hideouts of fleeing suspects, six were arrested, while the leader of the group led the soldiers to arrest seven others in three undisclosed locations in Maiduguri.
  “The insurgents are fleeing, into this city, because most of their training camps, rifles and other ammunition had been either destroyed or retrieved from the rampaging gunmen in Borno villages and towns on the fringes of Sambisa Forest. The arrested suspects, also confessed to participating in various village border attacks in Gwoza and Damboa council areas this year, including the blowing up of two bridges at Firgi and on Gwoza-Damboa road,” said a military officer that was not authorised to speak on recent arrests.

Military arrests 486 suspected Boko Haram members in Abia

• S’East govs meet Jonathan, say terrorists  can’t get to zone
NOT less than 486 suspected insurgents including eight females were said to have been arrested by the military personnel of the 144 battalion of the Nigerian Army with base at Asa in Ukwa West council of Abia State.
   But South East governors have ruled out the possibility of terrorist group, Boko Haram, spreading to the region.
  Anambra State Governor Willie Obiano disclosed the position of his colleagues from the region while speaking with State House correspondents after paying a “solidarity visit” to President Goodluck Jonathan in his office yesterday.
  Abia State Information Commissioner, Chief Eze Chikamnayo, who took some reporters to the military camp yesterday to see the suspects said they were arrested around 3:00 a.m. on Sunday along Enugu-Aba-Port Harcourt Expressway at  Arongwa area called Imo Gate, which is a boundary between Abia and Rivers states.
   He said that the suspects whose ages were from 15 years were traveling on 35 buses from undisclosed northern states to the South South.  He said that they claimed to be going to search for jobs, adding that two of the buses later escaped.
   The commissioner spoke in the presence of the Battalion Commander, Lt. Colonel Rasheed Omolori, whose only comment was that the report had already been sent to his headquarter.
   It was also disclosed that somebody whose name was not made known, had come to secure the release of the suspects but was arrested and detained.
  The commissioner urged members of the public to be more security conscious and report strange persons and suspects to the security agencies.
   Reacting to the incident, the state Police Public Relations Officer ( PPRO),  Mr. Geoffery Ogbonna,  said  that  the matter was a military one and had not been reported to the police command.
   He said that when he contacted the Army Public Relations Officer in the state whose name he did not mention, he told him  ( PPRO)  that he was not yet aware  of  the matter. 
  And following the bomb found on the premises and inside the Living Faith Church (a.k.a Winners Chapel), Port Harcourt Road, Owerri, capital city of Imo State, the Imo State Governor, Rochas Okorocha,  in conjunction with security chiefs yesterday launched what he called “Operation Know Your Neighbour.”
  The occasion was attended by a cross section of stakeholders in the state amid heavy security.
  The meeting resolved as follows:
“. Hotels in the state should install security cameras and on daily basis always forward the list of their guests to the Director of SSS.
 “. Trailers bringing food items from the North would no longer be allowed to come into the state at night but only in the day, and the food items would be off-loaded at a designated place off the state capital.
 “. Residents in the state must also be careful with broken bottles, cans, leather bags, parked tankers and vehicles around their homes, public places and public buildings.
“.  Traditional rulers in the state were directed to summon emergency meetings of their various communities to take stock of strange faces living with them.
 “. Uncompleted buildings in the cities in the state and environs without security guards will be taken over by the government because criminals use them as hideouts.
“. Lands left fallow for several years and not used for any economic or gainful purpose but taken over by criminals will be seized by the government
“. Smoking of Indian hemp was also banned.
“.  A meeting of all non-indigenes in the state has also been fixed.”
  Obiano’s comments came as a response to a  statement credited to Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State last week and  improvised explosive devises (IED) believed to have been discovered in a church in Owerri, the Imo State capital on Sunday0.
    Other governors who were seen included those of Abia, Chief Theordore Orji; Enugu, Sullivan Chime and Ebonyi, Martins Elechi. Okorocha of Imo State was absent.
     Asked if the governors of the South East were concerned about the possibility of Boko Haram spreading to their zone, Obiano said the terrorists could not get to the area. Besides, the governor would not be drawn into the issue of the bomb incident in Owerri, until he was availed of the facts.
  “No, they can’t get there; I can assure you of that. We will not allow that to happen. I can’t tell you in any material details about bombs found or not found. All I can assure you is that we are very alert in the South East and we are watching what is going on. But I can assure that Boko Haram cannot come to the South East.”
   Defending the visit of the governors to the president, the Anambra chief executive said it was intended to give him moral support, and denied that it was linked to the forthcoming general elections.
  His words: “The president is a human being and he is under a lot of pressure and some other people are making the work a lot more difficult for him. Instead of supporting him to steer us out of these stormy waters, they are adding kerosene to fire. So we are here to tell him that we are supporting him and that he should count on us.”
    The governor said the state government was working with the World Bank to tackle the erosion ravaging some parts of the state.
   “The World Bank and the state government are working on a lot of erosion sites already. They have expanded the four erosion sites they are working on currently to 12; so they are adding eight more erosion sites. I believe that this intervention which is 50/50 per cent contribution will go a long way in helping to tackle the erosion sites we have in the state.
  “We are also tackling erosion from the legal point of view. Bush burning will no longer be allowed, so also is cutting roads to lay pipes to houses. These are some of the factors that lead to erosion. We want people to do the necessary things that they should do; we want people to stop termination of drainages abruptly. We are putting a law in place to ensure that anybody that violates the law will face the consequences.”
  Besides, barely a week after foiling multiple attacks on Bitta and other villages in Borno State, troops of 7 Division of  the Nigerian Army  in Maiduguri, have  arrested 14 Boko Haram terror suspects, following “intelligence reports” from residents on the infiltration of terror suspects into  the metropolis from Gwoza and Damboa that were recently attacked by insurgents.
   The arrest, according to military sources in Maiduguri, was made at the weekend on Baga road when a commercial tricycle driver was stopped at a timber shed near an NNPC mega station after the alarm was raised by one of the passengers that “a Boko Haram suspect is among us in this tricycle. This man participated in the serial border attacks in Gwoza East, where many people were killed last week.”
     The alarm attracted the attention of soldiers at one of the military posts who quickly intervened to investigate the alleged identification of a suspect in a tricycle heading towards the Post Office area.
  The identified suspect, according to one of the passengers, disguised in a long robe and carried a black polythene bag. He allegedly confessed to the military that he was among other terror suspects that travelled to Maiduguri to collate more information about military operations and patrol in the city.
   Asked to further identify the suspect, the passenger said: “This suspect among our midst in this Keke Napep was the one that killed my brother in Gwoza last week.”
   After the identity of the suspect was unveiled before soldiers, the suspect said: “Don’t kill me, there are other members that participated in
Gwoza East and Damboa attacks. If you kill me today (Sunday) you will not be able to identify the hideouts of other suspects in Maiduguri.”
   It was learnt that after the suspect was taken away by soldiers in their patrol vehicle to hideouts of fleeing suspects, six were arrested, while the leader of the group led the soldiers to arrest seven others in three undisclosed locations in Maiduguri.
  “The insurgents are fleeing, into this city, because most of their training camps, rifles and other ammunition had been either destroyed or retrieved from the rampaging gunmen in Borno villages and towns on the fringes of Sambisa Forest. The arrested suspects, also confessed to participating in various village border attacks in Gwoza and Damboa council areas this year, including the blowing up of two bridges at Firgi and on Gwoza-Damboa road,” said a military officer that was not authorised to speak on recent arrests.

In The Lord’s Temple (2)

Continued from yesterday----- Scroll up on this blog for the part1
“WHAT is it my dear husband?” she asked, really perturbed. “You know I told you my destination this morning before leaving. My mission if you recall was to see my Doctor-friend Rotimi about our plight and to find out if he would help me financially. He opened up that the secret behind his wealth is voodoo or juju. That is if I want to be rich I have to perform certain fetish rituals, then wealth will come my way. What do you think, should I do it? I just don’t know what to do.”
“En! Enn! What are you saying darling? You, a pastor! God’s minister and servant! Don’t you ever try it.” She concluded without hesitation.
“I thought as much dear,” Austin replied, “There’s no going back. I serve the living God. No matter my travails or problems I can’t and will never look back. My God is Holy and awesome, I believe I’ll overcome my plight very soon. The storm will soon be over. I won’t taint or smear the Holy Spirit with mud.”
Some few minutes later Austin called for his lunch. His wife stood up and headed for the kitchen to bring it. She appeared the next moment with the food and placed it on the table. Austin was ready to eat his meal. There was actually no inkling or sign that something bad and disheartening was about to happen. He continued eating his food and washing it down once in a while with a glass of water in his front. Just then as Austin took a morsel in his mouth he began to laugh uproariously. It was a very strange laughter.
“What’s the matter dear?” his wife asked.
“He! Hee!! Heee!!! You mean you don’t know the matter? How can you know? Can’t you see I’m dining with the President? Heh, I want to visit the moon. I heard that life in the moon is better and sweeter! He! Hee!! Heee!!!” he ranted loony words.
“God! Good God what’s wrong with you?” Hannah asked again with tears gathering in her eyes. Instantly before Hannah could say another word Austin took off his shirt and flung it at her. The next minute he unzipped his trousers and took it off too. Then it dawned on Hannah that her loving husband had gone mad. She rushed towards the door and closed it to prevent her husband from running out into the street in nude. She wondered what caused the strange illness. That particular moment Austin had started dancing on the couch and singing strange and bizarre songs that made no sense.
Hannah didn’t know what to do about the strange development. She was just shedding heartbreaking tears as the time went by. She was in a state of panic. Then an idea struck her mind. She locked the door behind her husband and went to seek help from neighbours. She explained the sad development to sympathetic neighbours and they followed her to their apartment in a twinkling of an eye. When they entered the living room and saw the pathetic condition of Austin, the neighbours empathized with her. One of them suggested that Austin be rushed to the psychiatric hospital for treatment immediately. So, instantly they organized for a private cab and cleverly took Austin to a popular psychiatric hospital located in the heart of Lagos.
It was a most trying moment for Hannah. She started taking her husband from one psychiatric hospital to the other. She spent all her life savings to take care of her sick husband. His condition seemed to defy all medical explanations as he continued to grow from bad to worse. She became a really sad and frustrated woman. She fell ill in the fifth month and was diagnosed of Typhoid fever. She was admitted in the hospital. Her family had to spend several thousands of Naira for her medical treatment before Hannah’s health improved for the better. Her elder sister, Helen, warned her to tread softly with regards to her husband’s problem or else she’d lose her life. But Hannah was undaunted. She had made up her mind to support her ailing husband, and fight the battle for her own life and the life of her husband. She loved him too much. It’s rare feat for most women to stand by their husband during difficult times. A lot of modern-day wives would definitely abscond when their husband faces terrible challenges in their lives. With tears in her eyes, Hannah would feed her husband with food and water. Austin was now gaunt and really lean. He would not take food from anybody else but Hannah.
About three years later all hope seemed lost; it looked as if Austin would die after all. He had become as lean and thin as a broom stick. Hannah had exhausted all her life savings on her ailing husband and she was left with nothing. One day Austin called her from the depth of his soul. He remembered her name.
“Hannah, I don’t think I can overcome this problem… I see demons every day. Let me die…” he said.
“Oh no, you won’t die…” she replied. “God will sustain you…” she added with tears dripping from her eyes. Then she looked up at the sky and remembered that she has God, the creator of heaven and earth. She reasoned that she’d take Austin from the psychiatric hospital and take her to the church of God and leave him there. If God wished he’d live and if not he’d die. She concluded that God who is the author and finisher of our faith should decide the fate of her mad husband. She started a seven days fasting period for him. On the seventh day Austin started getting better and in control of his mental faculties. The prayer warriors in the church began a powerful prayer session in the church for him. Amazingly Austin’s health improved to the surprise of his wife. Austin spent exactly six months in the church under the care of the whole pastorate. He was now back on his feet again, mentally sound and healthy. It was all smiles and giggles from Hannah and Austin as they left the church premises for their house.
Austin started all over again and with God’s divine hand things got better for him financially within one year that he began his school business again. The Federal Government Educational Fund loaned him four million Naira to pursue his school project. Two years later Austin had about three private schools he personally owned. One of his schools was named Austin International College. After setting up Austin International College he entered a school of Theology to study and know more about God. He went back to his pastoral calling after graduating from the school of Theology and he set up a church all by himself.
 He became the head of Mustard Seed Church which was a church he founded to the glory of God. It was learnt that a couple of years later his doctor friend went mad on the very day Austin graduated from the Theology school. This shows that he had a hand in the problem that rocked Austin’s life and made him insane. Till now Rotimi remains mad. The good Lord has been so merciful and kind to Austin that he became very rich and he had three lovely children from his loving wife Hannah. No one in life is above trials and problems, but with God by one’s side one would surely overcome his or her travails. Almighty God knows what every human being faces in their day-to-day lives. It pays to get closer to God who has the sole power to put smile on our faces. At the moment Austin and his amiable wife are a successful couple with worthwhile investments running to billions of Naira all over Nigeria. To God be the glory.
Concluded.

Scientists advance plans to eliminate malaria

SCIENTISTS have made three major breakthroughs in the search for better treatment and control of malaria and the transmitting vector, female Anopheles mosquito.
      The latest of the three new findings is the modification of mosquitoes to produce sperm that will only create males, pioneering a fresh approach to eradicating malaria.
         Scientists from Imperial College London, in a study published in the journal Nature Communications, have tested a new genetic method that distorts the sex ratio of Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes, the main transmitters of the malaria parasite, so that the female mosquitoes that bite and pass the disease to humans are no longer produced.
     In the first laboratory tests, the method created a fully fertile mosquito strain that produced 95 per cent male offspring.
       The scientists introduced the genetically modified mosquitoes to five caged wild-type mosquito populations. In four of the five cages, this eliminated the entire population within six generations, because of the lack of females. The hope is that if this could be replicated in the wild, this would ultimately cause the malaria-carrying mosquito population to crash.
        This is the first time that scientists have been able to manipulate the sex ratios of mosquito populations. The researchers believe the work paves the way for a pioneering approach to controlling malaria.
        Also, a research team at the Institute for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of the Faculty of Medicine and the Centre for Biological Signalling Studies BIOSS at the University of Freiburg, Germany, led by Prof. Dr. Carola Hunte has succeeded in describing how the antimalarial drug atovaquone binds to its target protein. The scientists used x-ray crystallography to determine the three-dimensional structure of the protein with the active substance bound.
         The drug combination atovaquone-proguanil (Malarone) is a medication used worldwide for the prevention and treatment of malaria. The data and the resulting findings concerning the mode of action of atovaquone could lead to improved medications against the tropical disease. Hunte and her team conducted the research at the Institute for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of the Faculty of Medicine and the Centre for Biological Signalling Studies BIOSS at the University of Freiburg.
     The scientists published their findings in the journal Nature Communications.
      Also, researchers have found the first evidence of an intercellular bacterial infection in natural populations of two species of Anopheles mosquitoes, the major vectors of malaria in Africa. The infection, called Wolbachia, has been shown in labs to reduce the incidence of pathogen infections in mosquitoes and has the potential to be used in controlling malaria-transmitting mosquito populations.
          The study appears online June 6, 2014 in Nature Communications. Anopheles mosquitoes are the deadliest animal on the planet. They are responsible for transmitting malaria, which causes more than 600,000 deaths each year and puts half of the world’s population at risk for diseases.
        Wolbachia infections spread rapidly through wild insect populations by inducing a reproductive phenomenon called cytoplasm incompatibility (CI), and 66 per cent of arthropod species are infected. However, it was commonly thought that Anopheles mosquitoes were not natural hosts for Wolbachia infections, and attempts to identify infections in these mosquitoes in the field had failed.
          Malaria is one of the most dangerous tropical diseases in the world. Anopheles mosquitoes infected with Plasmodium species – unicellular parasites – transmit the disease by biting. Atovaquone blocks a protein of the respiratory chain in the mitochondria, the power plants of the cell, thus killing off the parasites. However, the pathogen is susceptible to mutations so that drug resistant strains are arising and spreading.
       Indeed, since 2000, increased prevention and control measures have reduced global malaria mortality rates by 42 per cent, but the disease remains a prevalent killer especially in vulnerable sub-Saharan African regions.
      Malaria control has also been threatened by the spread of insecticide resistant mosquitoes and malaria parasites resistant to drugs. According to latest estimates by the World Health Organization, over 3.4 billion people are at risk from contracting malaria and an estimated 627,000 people die each year from the disease.
        The Freiburg scientists have now paved the way for the development of improved drugs by revealing the precise binding mode of atovaquone to the target protein. They used the mitochondrial protein from cells of baker’s yeast for their analyses due to its close resemblance to the parasitic protein.
        The target protein of atovaquone is the third of four enzymes of the respiratory chain in the mitochondrion. The amino acid chains of the protein form a three-dimensional pocket. The molecule of the active substance fits perfectly into this pocket, binding to amino acids at numerous positions. These interactions are crucial for the effect atovaquone has in Plasmodium cells, ultimately leading to the death of the pathogen.
        The researchers conducted a protein sequence analysis, revealing that most of these docking sites are identical in the pathogen, baker’s yeast and in human cells. Atovaquone forms several bonds that are specific to the Plasmodium protein in the open area of the binding pocket. In addition, the structural analysis revealed the molecular basis of resistances: Due to mutations that change the structure of the target protein, the substance cannot reach the designated binding mode – it doesn’t fit perfectly into the pocket anymore.
      The data provides an important basis for improving antimalarial drugs. Scientists could now modify the molecular structure of atovaquone by means of structure-based drug design, ensuring that the active substance forms necessary bonds – and that the pathogen is no longer resistant to it.
          Associate professor of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and at the University of Perugia, Italy, said Flaminia Catteruccia, said: “Wolbachia is an interesting bacterium that seems perfectly suited for mosquito control. However, there were strong doubts that it could ever be used against field Anopheles populations.
       “We were thrilled when we identified infections in natural mosquito populations, as we knew this finding could generate novel opportunities for stopping the spread of malaria.”
       Co-author Francesco Baldini, from University of Perugia, Italy and HSPH, in collaboration with researchers from CNRS, France, collected Anopheles mosquitoes from villages in Burkina Faso, West Africa, and analyzed their reproductive tracts. Their objective was to identify all the bacteria in the reproductive systems of both male and female mosquitoes; they were not looking directly for Wolbachia. To their surprise, they found a novel strain of the infection, which they named wAnga.
        The researchers say they can now investigate whether the wAnga strain shares properties with other Wolbachia strains, which could make control strategies possible by inducing CI and reducing Plasmodium (the parasite that causes malaria) numbers in Anopheles mosquitoes in the field. “If successful, exploiting Wolbachia infections in malaria mosquitoes could reduce the burden of the disease globally,” said co-author Elena Levashina, from the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Berlin.
      Lead researcher Professor Andrea Crisanti from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London said: “Malaria is debilitating and often fatal and we need to find new ways of tackling it. We think our innovative approach is a huge step forward. For the very first time, we have been able to inhibit the production of female offspring in the laboratory and this provides a new means to eliminate the disease.”
        Dr Nikolai Windbichler, also a lead researcher from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London, said: “What is most promising about our results is that they are self-sustaining. Once modified mosquitoes are introduced, males will start to produce mainly sons, and their sons will do the same, so essentially the mosquitoes carry out the work for us.”
       In this new experiment the scientists inserted a DNA cutting enzyme called I-PpoI into Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes. In normal reproduction, half of the sperm bear the X chromosome and will produce female offspring, and the other half bear the Y chromosome and produce male offspring.
         The enzyme that the researchers used works by cutting the DNA of the X chromosome during production of sperm, so that almost no functioning sperm carry the female X chromosome. As a result the offspring of the genetically modified mosquitoes was almost exclusively male.
It took the researchers six years to produce an effective variant of the enzyme.
      “The research is still in its early days, but I am really hopeful that this new approach could ultimately lead to a cheap and effective way to eliminate malaria from entire regions. Our goal is to enable people to live freely without the threat of this deadly disease,” concluded Dr Roberto Galizi from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London.

Scientists advance plans to eliminate malaria

SCIENTISTS have made three major breakthroughs in the search for better treatment and control of malaria and the transmitting vector, female Anopheles mosquito.
      The latest of the three new findings is the modification of mosquitoes to produce sperm that will only create males, pioneering a fresh approach to eradicating malaria.
         Scientists from Imperial College London, in a study published in the journal Nature Communications, have tested a new genetic method that distorts the sex ratio of Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes, the main transmitters of the malaria parasite, so that the female mosquitoes that bite and pass the disease to humans are no longer produced.
     In the first laboratory tests, the method created a fully fertile mosquito strain that produced 95 per cent male offspring.
       The scientists introduced the genetically modified mosquitoes to five caged wild-type mosquito populations. In four of the five cages, this eliminated the entire population within six generations, because of the lack of females. The hope is that if this could be replicated in the wild, this would ultimately cause the malaria-carrying mosquito population to crash.
        This is the first time that scientists have been able to manipulate the sex ratios of mosquito populations. The researchers believe the work paves the way for a pioneering approach to controlling malaria.
        Also, a research team at the Institute for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of the Faculty of Medicine and the Centre for Biological Signalling Studies BIOSS at the University of Freiburg, Germany, led by Prof. Dr. Carola Hunte has succeeded in describing how the antimalarial drug atovaquone binds to its target protein. The scientists used x-ray crystallography to determine the three-dimensional structure of the protein with the active substance bound.
         The drug combination atovaquone-proguanil (Malarone) is a medication used worldwide for the prevention and treatment of malaria. The data and the resulting findings concerning the mode of action of atovaquone could lead to improved medications against the tropical disease. Hunte and her team conducted the research at the Institute for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of the Faculty of Medicine and the Centre for Biological Signalling Studies BIOSS at the University of Freiburg.
     The scientists published their findings in the journal Nature Communications.
      Also, researchers have found the first evidence of an intercellular bacterial infection in natural populations of two species of Anopheles mosquitoes, the major vectors of malaria in Africa. The infection, called Wolbachia, has been shown in labs to reduce the incidence of pathogen infections in mosquitoes and has the potential to be used in controlling malaria-transmitting mosquito populations.
          The study appears online June 6, 2014 in Nature Communications. Anopheles mosquitoes are the deadliest animal on the planet. They are responsible for transmitting malaria, which causes more than 600,000 deaths each year and puts half of the world’s population at risk for diseases.
        Wolbachia infections spread rapidly through wild insect populations by inducing a reproductive phenomenon called cytoplasm incompatibility (CI), and 66 per cent of arthropod species are infected. However, it was commonly thought that Anopheles mosquitoes were not natural hosts for Wolbachia infections, and attempts to identify infections in these mosquitoes in the field had failed.
          Malaria is one of the most dangerous tropical diseases in the world. Anopheles mosquitoes infected with Plasmodium species – unicellular parasites – transmit the disease by biting. Atovaquone blocks a protein of the respiratory chain in the mitochondria, the power plants of the cell, thus killing off the parasites. However, the pathogen is susceptible to mutations so that drug resistant strains are arising and spreading.
       Indeed, since 2000, increased prevention and control measures have reduced global malaria mortality rates by 42 per cent, but the disease remains a prevalent killer especially in vulnerable sub-Saharan African regions.
      Malaria control has also been threatened by the spread of insecticide resistant mosquitoes and malaria parasites resistant to drugs. According to latest estimates by the World Health Organization, over 3.4 billion people are at risk from contracting malaria and an estimated 627,000 people die each year from the disease.
        The Freiburg scientists have now paved the way for the development of improved drugs by revealing the precise binding mode of atovaquone to the target protein. They used the mitochondrial protein from cells of baker’s yeast for their analyses due to its close resemblance to the parasitic protein.
        The target protein of atovaquone is the third of four enzymes of the respiratory chain in the mitochondrion. The amino acid chains of the protein form a three-dimensional pocket. The molecule of the active substance fits perfectly into this pocket, binding to amino acids at numerous positions. These interactions are crucial for the effect atovaquone has in Plasmodium cells, ultimately leading to the death of the pathogen.
        The researchers conducted a protein sequence analysis, revealing that most of these docking sites are identical in the pathogen, baker’s yeast and in human cells. Atovaquone forms several bonds that are specific to the Plasmodium protein in the open area of the binding pocket. In addition, the structural analysis revealed the molecular basis of resistances: Due to mutations that change the structure of the target protein, the substance cannot reach the designated binding mode – it doesn’t fit perfectly into the pocket anymore.
      The data provides an important basis for improving antimalarial drugs. Scientists could now modify the molecular structure of atovaquone by means of structure-based drug design, ensuring that the active substance forms necessary bonds – and that the pathogen is no longer resistant to it.
          Associate professor of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and at the University of Perugia, Italy, said Flaminia Catteruccia, said: “Wolbachia is an interesting bacterium that seems perfectly suited for mosquito control. However, there were strong doubts that it could ever be used against field Anopheles populations.
       “We were thrilled when we identified infections in natural mosquito populations, as we knew this finding could generate novel opportunities for stopping the spread of malaria.”
       Co-author Francesco Baldini, from University of Perugia, Italy and HSPH, in collaboration with researchers from CNRS, France, collected Anopheles mosquitoes from villages in Burkina Faso, West Africa, and analyzed their reproductive tracts. Their objective was to identify all the bacteria in the reproductive systems of both male and female mosquitoes; they were not looking directly for Wolbachia. To their surprise, they found a novel strain of the infection, which they named wAnga.
        The researchers say they can now investigate whether the wAnga strain shares properties with other Wolbachia strains, which could make control strategies possible by inducing CI and reducing Plasmodium (the parasite that causes malaria) numbers in Anopheles mosquitoes in the field. “If successful, exploiting Wolbachia infections in malaria mosquitoes could reduce the burden of the disease globally,” said co-author Elena Levashina, from the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Berlin.
      Lead researcher Professor Andrea Crisanti from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London said: “Malaria is debilitating and often fatal and we need to find new ways of tackling it. We think our innovative approach is a huge step forward. For the very first time, we have been able to inhibit the production of female offspring in the laboratory and this provides a new means to eliminate the disease.”
        Dr Nikolai Windbichler, also a lead researcher from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London, said: “What is most promising about our results is that they are self-sustaining. Once modified mosquitoes are introduced, males will start to produce mainly sons, and their sons will do the same, so essentially the mosquitoes carry out the work for us.”
       In this new experiment the scientists inserted a DNA cutting enzyme called I-PpoI into Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes. In normal reproduction, half of the sperm bear the X chromosome and will produce female offspring, and the other half bear the Y chromosome and produce male offspring.
         The enzyme that the researchers used works by cutting the DNA of the X chromosome during production of sperm, so that almost no functioning sperm carry the female X chromosome. As a result the offspring of the genetically modified mosquitoes was almost exclusively male.
It took the researchers six years to produce an effective variant of the enzyme.
      “The research is still in its early days, but I am really hopeful that this new approach could ultimately lead to a cheap and effective way to eliminate malaria from entire regions. Our goal is to enable people to live freely without the threat of this deadly disease,” concluded Dr Roberto Galizi from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London.

Photos: Actor Chiwetalu Agu grabs actresses’ bosoms on movie set

Funny---Comment

Photos: Actor Chiwetalu Agu grabs actresses’ bosoms on movie set

Funny---Comment

Belief: Why Do Some People Find It Hard To Believe In Themselves?

Expert Author Oliver J R Cooper

When it comes to being successful and achieving what one wants to achieve, it is important that one believes in themselves. Without this belief, one is going to find it difficult to achieve anything. So not only will it be impossible for one to thrive, it could also be a real challenge for them to just survive.
And as Theodore Roosevelt once said – “Believe you can and you’re halfway there”. This shows how much of an advantage one will have if they believe in themselves. This is not to say that one doesn’t have to do anything and everything will simply fall into place.
However, what it will mean is that one will show up in life and give something a go; they might go all the way or they may decide it is not for them. The belief that they have in themselves allows them to take action.
A State Of Mind
Having self belief doesn’t mean that one never experiences challenges or that they ignore them, what it means is that one knows they will be able to overcome them. And this is unlikely to be the result of thinking logically; it will be something that they just ‘know’.
Challenges will then come and go and yet, their self belief is likely to remain. And with each challenge that one overcomes, their self belief is likely to increase. The power of momentum is then at play, and one success can end up catapulting them onto another.
The Onlooker
In the eyes of other people, they may believe that the reason one believes in themselves is because they are highly competent in what they do or in life in general. Or they could believe that one is simply deluded and can’t see where this belief comes from.
And while their outer reality and what they have achieved is going to reflect their inner belief, they had to believe in themselves first, or their outer reality wouldn’t be what it is and they wouldn’t have achieved what they have. One may seem deluded, but then, belief is not something that one attains by meeting certain requirements.
It is not based on anything external or through receiving other people’s permission either. How other people view someone who does have self belief will be the result of their own interpretations. Therefore, one may have no idea why another person believes in themselves.
They’re Different
To say that people who believe in themselves are different to people who don’t would be partly true. They are different to a certain degree, but they’re not inherently different.
At some point in this person’s life, there is going to be a least one person who believed in them. And like a seed, this support would have allowed them to gradually develop their own self belief.
External Support
No one is their own island after all; each and every one of us needs other people to be able to grow and develop. This external support could have come from a family member, a friend and/or teacher, for example.
It may have been something that one experienced for many years or it may have been something one experienced for a short period of time. But no matter how long it lasted, it was enough to make a difference in their life.
Developing Self Belief
The reason one doesn’t believe in themselves is then not because they are missing something, it is because they have not received what they need to receive in order to develop self belief. And this means that if one gets the right support, they will be able to develop self belief.
To use a quote by Dov Baron – ”every one of us needs someone to believe in us long enough for us to develop the inner strength to believe in ourselves… Find yourself a Mentor!”.
This quote shows how important it is to receive the right support from others. So if one hasn’t received this support until this point, it doesn’t mean this has to continue for much longer.
Awareness
Everyone needs help form time to time and this is not something that one should feel ashamed of or that they are therefore incapable. This support can come from a coach, trusted friend or some kind of teacher.
It doesn’t matter who this support comes form, what matter is that one reaches out for it. One could read books that are supportive and yet, this might not be enough

Belief: Why Do Some People Find It Hard To Believe In Themselves?

Expert Author Oliver J R Cooper

When it comes to being successful and achieving what one wants to achieve, it is important that one believes in themselves. Without this belief, one is going to find it difficult to achieve anything. So not only will it be impossible for one to thrive, it could also be a real challenge for them to just survive.
And as Theodore Roosevelt once said – “Believe you can and you’re halfway there”. This shows how much of an advantage one will have if they believe in themselves. This is not to say that one doesn’t have to do anything and everything will simply fall into place.
However, what it will mean is that one will show up in life and give something a go; they might go all the way or they may decide it is not for them. The belief that they have in themselves allows them to take action.
A State Of Mind
Having self belief doesn’t mean that one never experiences challenges or that they ignore them, what it means is that one knows they will be able to overcome them. And this is unlikely to be the result of thinking logically; it will be something that they just ‘know’.
Challenges will then come and go and yet, their self belief is likely to remain. And with each challenge that one overcomes, their self belief is likely to increase. The power of momentum is then at play, and one success can end up catapulting them onto another.
The Onlooker
In the eyes of other people, they may believe that the reason one believes in themselves is because they are highly competent in what they do or in life in general. Or they could believe that one is simply deluded and can’t see where this belief comes from.
And while their outer reality and what they have achieved is going to reflect their inner belief, they had to believe in themselves first, or their outer reality wouldn’t be what it is and they wouldn’t have achieved what they have. One may seem deluded, but then, belief is not something that one attains by meeting certain requirements.
It is not based on anything external or through receiving other people’s permission either. How other people view someone who does have self belief will be the result of their own interpretations. Therefore, one may have no idea why another person believes in themselves.
They’re Different
To say that people who believe in themselves are different to people who don’t would be partly true. They are different to a certain degree, but they’re not inherently different.
At some point in this person’s life, there is going to be a least one person who believed in them. And like a seed, this support would have allowed them to gradually develop their own self belief.
External Support
No one is their own island after all; each and every one of us needs other people to be able to grow and develop. This external support could have come from a family member, a friend and/or teacher, for example.
It may have been something that one experienced for many years or it may have been something one experienced for a short period of time. But no matter how long it lasted, it was enough to make a difference in their life.
Developing Self Belief
The reason one doesn’t believe in themselves is then not because they are missing something, it is because they have not received what they need to receive in order to develop self belief. And this means that if one gets the right support, they will be able to develop self belief.
To use a quote by Dov Baron – ”every one of us needs someone to believe in us long enough for us to develop the inner strength to believe in ourselves… Find yourself a Mentor!”.
This quote shows how important it is to receive the right support from others. So if one hasn’t received this support until this point, it doesn’t mean this has to continue for much longer.
Awareness
Everyone needs help form time to time and this is not something that one should feel ashamed of or that they are therefore incapable. This support can come from a coach, trusted friend or some kind of teacher.
It doesn’t matter who this support comes form, what matter is that one reaches out for it. One could read books that are supportive and yet, this might not be enough

5 Unexpected Things that Could Be Destroying Your Marriage

 
Often when we think about what damages a relationship our minds turn to money troubles or infidelity, and although those are very real issues for many couples, there are several other things in life that can contribute to the demise of your marriage.

We’ve all heard how maintaining a marriage is hard work. Well, it’s true. But it’s not only about putting in the work. It’s also about keeping an eye out for those day-to-day things that creep up on your relationship and start to become a problem. And typically, these are things that you don’t expect to cause much damage. Sometimes it’s even stuff that you thought was there to make your relationship stronger. But you see, even if something has the potential to make your relationship stronger, it can definitely make your relationship weaker if you aren’t careful.
Here are a few unexpected things that could be destroying your marriage.
Technology. I love technology as much as the next person, but I also know how distracting it is, particularly if it’s a critical part of the work you do. Whether it’s navigating the web, completing a project, or catching up with social media, too much time on your computer can begin to damage your relationship. Consider blocking out times during the week where you unplug and spend more time with your spouse.
Your friends. Friends typically mean well, but that does really matter when their “well-meaning” actions and words start to interfere with your relationship. You and your spouse both need friends, but you also have to think about what role those friends play in your life and in your relationship. How much are you telling them about your marriage? Do you spend more of your free time with them than you do with your spouse? These are just some of the questions you should ask yourself to determine if your friendships are strengthening your marriage and not damaging it.
Your kids. I love my kids and so does my husband. But, if you are not careful, a funny thing happens when you have kids. You start to have your life revolve around them and they become the priority—all the time. As a parent, certainly having your kids as the priority seems like the right thing, but your spouse should still be a priority in your life too. Focusing only on your kids and forgetting all about the person raising them with you can become a problem.
Your career. I’m a pretty driven person, and I have no intentions of changing that. But I also know that there is a need to pace myself because I have a husband and kids. If I become consumed by my drive to succeed, I can begin to ignore their needs. My husband is my biggest cheerleader, but if he realizes that cheering for me is causing me to forget about him, imagine how he’ll feel? Focusing on your career is critical and commendable, but not at the expense of your marriage and your family.
Your Self-Esteem. Low self-esteem has a negative impact on every area of your life. If you don’t feel good about who you are, you end up in this unhealthy pattern that compels you to look outwards for validation. The problem is, your spouse can’t give you anything that you aren’t willing to give yourself, nor should they have to. You may not realize it, but low self-esteem is one of those things that slowly eats away at the relationships in your life, and your marriage is certainly one of them.
Source: Candidbelle.com

5 Unexpected Things that Could Be Destroying Your Marriage

 
Often when we think about what damages a relationship our minds turn to money troubles or infidelity, and although those are very real issues for many couples, there are several other things in life that can contribute to the demise of your marriage.

We’ve all heard how maintaining a marriage is hard work. Well, it’s true. But it’s not only about putting in the work. It’s also about keeping an eye out for those day-to-day things that creep up on your relationship and start to become a problem. And typically, these are things that you don’t expect to cause much damage. Sometimes it’s even stuff that you thought was there to make your relationship stronger. But you see, even if something has the potential to make your relationship stronger, it can definitely make your relationship weaker if you aren’t careful.
Here are a few unexpected things that could be destroying your marriage.
Technology. I love technology as much as the next person, but I also know how distracting it is, particularly if it’s a critical part of the work you do. Whether it’s navigating the web, completing a project, or catching up with social media, too much time on your computer can begin to damage your relationship. Consider blocking out times during the week where you unplug and spend more time with your spouse.
Your friends. Friends typically mean well, but that does really matter when their “well-meaning” actions and words start to interfere with your relationship. You and your spouse both need friends, but you also have to think about what role those friends play in your life and in your relationship. How much are you telling them about your marriage? Do you spend more of your free time with them than you do with your spouse? These are just some of the questions you should ask yourself to determine if your friendships are strengthening your marriage and not damaging it.
Your kids. I love my kids and so does my husband. But, if you are not careful, a funny thing happens when you have kids. You start to have your life revolve around them and they become the priority—all the time. As a parent, certainly having your kids as the priority seems like the right thing, but your spouse should still be a priority in your life too. Focusing only on your kids and forgetting all about the person raising them with you can become a problem.
Your career. I’m a pretty driven person, and I have no intentions of changing that. But I also know that there is a need to pace myself because I have a husband and kids. If I become consumed by my drive to succeed, I can begin to ignore their needs. My husband is my biggest cheerleader, but if he realizes that cheering for me is causing me to forget about him, imagine how he’ll feel? Focusing on your career is critical and commendable, but not at the expense of your marriage and your family.
Your Self-Esteem. Low self-esteem has a negative impact on every area of your life. If you don’t feel good about who you are, you end up in this unhealthy pattern that compels you to look outwards for validation. The problem is, your spouse can’t give you anything that you aren’t willing to give yourself, nor should they have to. You may not realize it, but low self-esteem is one of those things that slowly eats away at the relationships in your life, and your marriage is certainly one of them.
Source: Candidbelle.com

Akunyili To Be Buried August 28

Former Minister of Information and Communications, Professor Dora Akunyili, will be buried on August 28, 2014, the family has announced.

“Details about the funeral arrangements will be made available to the public in due course,” her husband, Dr Chike Akunyili, said in a statement issued in Awka, Anambra State, on Sunday.
Dr Akunyili thanked Nigerians for the love they extended to Dora, both in life and at death and also expressed the appreciation of the family to President Goodluck Jonathan for the special valedictory session of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) held in honour of the deceased.
Dora Akunyili former DG of the National Agency for Food, Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC) died after a protracted battle with cancer. She was 59.

Akunyili To Be Buried August 28

Former Minister of Information and Communications, Professor Dora Akunyili, will be buried on August 28, 2014, the family has announced.

“Details about the funeral arrangements will be made available to the public in due course,” her husband, Dr Chike Akunyili, said in a statement issued in Awka, Anambra State, on Sunday.
Dr Akunyili thanked Nigerians for the love they extended to Dora, both in life and at death and also expressed the appreciation of the family to President Goodluck Jonathan for the special valedictory session of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) held in honour of the deceased.
Dora Akunyili former DG of the National Agency for Food, Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC) died after a protracted battle with cancer. She was 59.