No link between cell phones and brain cancer

Good news for hand phone users as their is no direct correlation between cell phone and brain tumours, at least in this study.

Study: No link between cell phones and brain cancer

LOS ANGELES: A latest study by Nordic researchers, found that there is no apparent link between cell phones and brain cancer, China's Xinhua news agency reported, citing the online edition of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Researchers at the Institute of Cancer Epidemiology at the Danish Cancer Society in Copenhagen based their conclusion on a 30-year examination of the incidents of brain tumors in Scandinavia.

For the study, the researchers collected data on 60,000 people diagnosed with glioma and meningioma (types of brain tumours) in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden between 1974 and 2003, Xinhua said.

The researchers found that the incidence of brain tumors over this 30-year period were stable, starting before cell phones became popular.

In addition, there was no change in the incidence of brain tumors between 1998 and 2003, a period of rapid increase in cell phone usage, the researchers noted.

"If mobile phones were to cause brain tumors, we would expect to see a sudden rise in the number of brain tumors at some point in time, and we don't see it," said lead researcher Isabelle Deltour.

However, Deltour leaves the door open to the possibility that widespread cell phone use has not been around long enough to see an increase in brain tumors.

"Either it means that mobile phones don't cause brain tumors or it means that we don't see it yet or we don't see it because the increase is too small to be observed in this population, or it is a risk that is limited to a small subgroup of the population," she said.

Despite new findings, doubts linger about whether cell phones cause brain cancer.

Commenting on that study, Dr. Deepa Subramaniam, director of the Brain Tumor Center at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center in Washington, D.C., said: "We cannot make any definitive conclusions about this.

“But this study, in addition to all the previous studies, continues to leave lingering doubt as to the potential for increased risk. So, one more time, after all these years, we don't have a clearcut answer." Deltour said her team would continue to look at the rates of brain tumors in the study group. - Bernama

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/12/4/nation/20091204160648&sec=nation

Being a "vegetable" for 23 years

Imagine if you were stuck in your body for 23 years being completely aware of your surroundings but not able to voice out your opinion.

Brain scan finds man was not in a coma--23 years later

Rom Houben has been trapped in a series of worst nightmares, including trying for 23 years to alert those around him that he was not in a coma. A new report suggests he's not alone in his experience.

Neurologist Steven Laureys used state-of-the-art brain scanning techniques to study Houben's cerebral cortex.

(Credit: Universite de Liege)

In 1983, Belgian engineering student and martial arts enthusiast Houben, then 20, was in a car accident that was thought to have left him in a vegetative state. Doctors relied on the widely-used Glasgow Coma Scale, assessing his eyes, verbal, and motor responses. What they failed to notice was that Houben was actually conscious--but completely paralyzed.

"I screamed, but there was no one to hear," he says in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel. Three years ago, neurologist Steven Laureys used modern scanning techniques to discover that Houben's cerebral cortex was, in fact, functioning. (The doctor has only just now made Houben's story public.)

Houben, who communicates via a computer with a special keyboard activated with the slightest movement of his right hand, is now 46. He has spent more than half his life trapped in his own body, and says he only survived this excruciating existence by dreaming himself away. In the interview, this is what he typed:

I am called Rom. I am not dead. The nurses came, they patted me, they sometimes took my hand, and I heard them say "no hope." I meditated, I dreamed my life away--it was all I could do. I don't want to blame anyone--it wouldn't do any good. But I owe my life to my family. Everyone else gave up.

I studied what happened around me as if it were a tiny piece of world drama, the bizarre peculiarities of the other patients in the common room, the entry of the doctors into my room, the gossip of the nurses who were not embarrassed to speak about their boyfriends in front of "the extinct one." That made me an expert on relationships.

According to Laureys, Houben's case may be far more common than we'd like to think. The doctor, who leads the Coma Science Group and Department of Neurology at Liege University Hospital, says that while Houben's doctors were "not good," he's not sure better ones using this same coma scale would have detected brain activity either:

In Germany alone each year some 100,000 people suffer from severe traumatic brain injury. About 20,000 are followed by a coma of three weeks or longer. Some of them die, others regain health. But an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 people a year remain trapped in an intermediate stage--they go on living without ever coming back again.

In his paper, Laureys writes that in about 40 percent of "vegetative state" cases he has analyzed, current brain scanning techniques reveal signs of varying levels of consciousness. A case is being made, it seems, to stop relying on the Glasgow Coma Scale and start looking more closely at brain scanning images.

Source:http://news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-10403861-247.html

Fingers of destiny

This research was published in 2004. A little old but interesting.

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Academics find that the finger of destiny points their way

Male scientists are good at research because they have the hormone levels of women and long index fingers, a new study says.

A survey of academics at the University of Bath has found that male scientists typically have a level of the hormone oestrogen as high as their testosterone level.

These hormone levels are more usual in women than men, who normally have higher levels of testosterone.

The study draws on research which suggests that these unusual hormone levels in many male scientists cause the right side of their brains, which governs spatial and analytic skills, to develop strongly.

The study, which has been submitted to the British Journal of Psychology, also found that:

• these hormonal levels may make male scientists less likely to have children.
• those men with a higher level of oestrogen were more likely than average to have relatives with dyslexia, which may in part be caused by hormonal levels.
• women social scientists tended to have higher levels of testosterone, making their brains closer to those of males in general.

The study drew on work in the last few years which established that the levels of oestrogen and testosterone a person has can be seen in the relative length of their index (second) and ring (fourth) fingers. The ratio of the lengths is set before birth and remains the same throughout life.

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Full article: http://www.bath.ac.uk/pr/releases/fingerlength.htm