Toxic aldehydes detected in reheated oil

 by Biomechanism  

Researchers from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU, Spain) have been the first to discover the presence of certain aldehydes in food, which are believed to be related to someneurodegenerative diseases and some types of cancer. These toxic compounds can be found in some oils, such as sunflower oil, when heated at a suitable temperature for frying.

At frying temperature, sunflower oil produces more harmful compounds than olive oil. Credit: SINC

“It was known that at frying temperature, oil releases aldehydes that pollute the atmosphere and can be inhaled, so we decided to research into whether these remain in the oil after they are heated, and they do” María Dolores Guillén, a lecturer in the Pharmacy and Food Technology Department at the UPV, tells SINC.

The researcher is a co-author of a project that confirms the simultaneous presence of various toxic aldehydes from the ‘oxygenated α, β-unsaturated group’ such as 4-hydroxy-[E]-2nonenal. Furthermore, two have been traced in foods for the first time (4-oxo-[E]-2-decenal and 4-oxo-[E]-2-undecenal). 

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Until now these substances had only been seen in bio-medical studies, where their presence in organisms is linked to different types of cancer and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

The toxic aldehydes are a result of degradation of the fatty acids in oil, and although some are volatile, others remain after frying. That is why than be found in cooked food. As they are very reactive compounds they can react with proteins, hormones and enzymes in the organism and impede its correct functioning.

The research, which is published in the Food Chemistry journal, involved heating three types of oil (olive, sunflower and flaxseeds) in an industrial deep fryer at 190 ºC. This was carried out for 40 hours (8 hours a day) in the first two, and 20 hours for the linseed oil. The latter is not normally used for cooking in the west, but it has been chosen due to its high content in omega 3 groups.

More toxic aldehydes in sunflower oil 

After applying gas chromatography/mass spectrometry techniques, the results show that sunflower and linseed oil (especially the first) are the ones that create the most toxic aldehydes in less time. These oils are high in polyunsaturated fats (linoleic and linolenic).

Adversely, olive oil, which has a higher concentration of monounsaturated fats (such as oleic), generate these harmful compounds in a smaller amount and later.

In previous studies, the same researchers found that in oils subjected to frying temperatures, other toxic substances, alkyl benzenes (aromatic hydrocarbons) were found. They concluded that of the oils studied, olive oil is the one that creates the least.

The dose makes the poison 

“It is not intended to alarm the population, but this data is what it is, and it should be taken into account” Guillén highlights, who points out the need to continue researching to establish clear limits regarding the risk of these compounds. “On some occasions the dose makes the poison” the researcher reminds us.

Spanish regulations that control the quality of heated fats and oils establish a maximum value of 25% for polar components (degradation products coming from frying). Nonetheless, according to the new study, before some of the oils analysed reach this limit, they already have a “significant concentration” of toxic aldehyde.

The study counts all the aldehydes (not the just the harmful ones) that are generated during frying. Furthermore, the authors present a model that allows the prediction of how any hypothetical oil will evolve in the same conditions, if they know its initial fatty acid composition.

-Food & Nutrition

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References:

Maria D. Guillén, Patricia S. Uriarte. “Aldehydes contained in edible oils of a very different nature after prolonged heating at frying temperature: Presence of toxic oxygenated α, β unsaturated aldehydes”. Food Chemistry131 (3): 915-926, April 2012 (available on line since September 2011). Doi: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2011.09.079.

New street drug 'bath salts' packs double punch, mimics effects of two powerful narcotics

The street drug commonly referred to as "bath salts" is one of a growing list of synthetic and unevenly regulated narcotics that are found across the United States and on the Internet. New research on this potent drug paints an alarming picture, revealing that bath salts pack a powerful double punch, producing combined effects similar to both methamphetamine (METH) and cocaine.

"This combination of effects is particularly novel and unexpected," said Louis J. De Felice of Virginia Commonwealth University's School of Medicine in Richmond. "Methamphetamine and cocaine operate in the brain in completely opposite ways. It would be atypical that both drugs would be taken together, but that's the effect that occurs with bath salts."

De Felice and his colleagues will present their research at the 56th Annual Meeting of the Biophysical Society (BPS), held Feb. 25-29 in San Diego, Calif.

The team's research reveals that bath salts contain two structurally similar chemicals that produce quite dissimilar effects on the brain's dopamine transport system. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays an important role in the brain's pleasure and reward centers. Though bath salts' chemicals are structurally similar, both acting as potent psycho-stimulants, they use completely opposite mechanisms in the brain.

The first component is a dopamine-releasing agent known as mephedrone (MEPH), which – like METH – causes the brain to release more dopamine. The other chemical is methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV), which – like cocaine – is a dopamine reuptake inhibitor. Both compounds increase dopamine availability to receptors, and both – through different mechanisms – produce feelings of euphoria.

The surprising finding is that rather than canceling each other out, as would be anticipated, the chemicals combine to enhance the effects of the other. "The two drugs have different kinetics, so rather than cancel each other they exacerbate the effect of either drug applied alone," said De Felice.

The researchers began this particular project as part of a larger study on how amphetamine and METH affect the human dopamine transporter molecule. They made the novel finding that both chemicals create long-lasting effects that endure 30 minutes or more after the drugs are removed. This initial research continued with cathinone (CATH), which is a naturally occurring compound found in the khat shrub (Catha edulis). The drugs found in bath salts (MEPH and MDPV) are synthetic derivatives of CATH.

"The stimulant and blocker features of these drugs have been studied previously," said De Felice, "but the evidence for long-lasting stimulation by MEPH and inhibition by MDPV is novel. It also is in some sense unexpected that two structurally similar agents could act oppositely at the dopamine transporter."

The researchers do not yet know why these drugs have a persistent effect. They also don't understand the fundamental reason why two structurally similar drugs act oppositely on the dopamine transporter.

"There also are many questions on the meaning of these findings for the dozens of other illicit synthetic drugs that have found their way to the street," concludes De Felice. "We do suspect, however, that the combination that is found in bath salts could be behind its powerful physiological and neurological effect on users."

According to the American Association of Poison Control Centers, there were more than 6,000 calls to poison control centers pertaining to bath salts in 2011, more than ten times the number in 2010. Reported symptoms of exposure include increased blood pressure, increased heart rate, agitation, hallucinations, extreme paranoia, and delusions.

More information: The presentation, "'Bath Salts': A synthetic cathinone whose two major components act similar to methamphetamine and cocaine on the human dopamine transporter," is at 9:15 a.m. on Monday, Feb. 27, 2012, in the San Diego Convention Center, Room 24ABC. ABSTRACT: http://tinyurl.com/7qppna8

Provided by American Institute of Physics

"New street drug 'bath salts' packs double punch, mimics effects of two powerful narcotics." February 23rd, 2012.http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-street-drug-salts-mimics-effects.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Always In Stock

“The Personality of Godhead is perfect and complete, and because He is completely perfect, all emanations from Him, such as this phenomenal world, are perfectly equipped as complete wholes. Whatever is produced of the Complete Whole is also complete in itself. Because He is the Complete Whole, even though so many complete units emanate from Him, He remains the complete balance.” (Shri Ishopanishad Invocation)

If your knowledge of food is based only on walking into a store and picking up the materials necessary for cooking, you may overlook the fact that land, water, sunlight and careful attention are required for those food ingredients to be produced. The same principle applies when eating out at a restaurant, as the finished dish received on the plate is the result of someone mixing the ingredients together in the kitchen. Due to the blindness in extensive vision, the fear of scarcity can arise, wherein one thinks that there aren’t enough precious resources available in this world to keep everyone alive. But from the properties of the creator, we learn that there can never be such a thing as scarcity in this or any other world.

Who is the creator? How do we know that someone created this world and how can we know their properties? As we can’t tell what’s going on three thousand miles away unless someone tells us or beams a video feed from a satellite, our knowledge gathering abilities are limited. Rather than insist on direct perception for every kind of information transfer, a superior method is to just hear from authority sources. As the most inconceivable topic is the creation of the earth and the person who is responsible for it, the best way to accept that information is also through hearing. Hence the oldest scriptural tradition in the world is known as the shrutis, or that which is heard. Passed on through an oral tradition since the beginning of time, the Vedas, which have more recently been documented in written word, reveal the genesis of the creation and, more importantly, the properties of the creator.

Why is it important to know both? Well, for starters we can already tell that there was a creation. The end result proves that fact. How that creation came into being is more important, because that gives us the intelligence behind the creating actions and the ideal use of the playing field that we call earth. If a series of chemicals just collided to create this universe, why can’t someone take the same chemicals and make their own planet, filled with diverse species like trees, birds, beasts, and human beings? What is to stop those same chemicals from dissipating and thus causing colossal destruction?

Just as within every living being there is an intelligent force known as the spirit soul, the movements of the entire creation, which are too many to fully understand, take place under the direction of intelligent spirit. The shrutis apply many names to that intelligent entity, with the most descriptive being Krishna. Krishna means all-attractive, so the original creator has every desirable feature imaginable. His creative potency falls under the categories of His strength, wealth and knowledge. From His strength He can make this and many other planets that are still less powerful than He is. From His wealth He can generate the necessary ingredients for creation. The entire land of the earth, which includes its component seeds, belongs to Krishna, so He is thus the greatest land owner.

Krishna’s knowledge is partially passed on to those who manage the material creation and those looking to flourish in it. It is through His indirect energies, His proxies, that this creation comes into being. Lord Brahma, the creator of mankind, populates the earth at the direction of Krishna, and from the same Krishna Brahma gets the necessary information for surviving within the complex nature governed by fruitive activity and the corresponding reactions, or what is better known as the system of karma.

Krishna’s direction in the shrutis is akin to an instruction manual, or better yet, a software development kit. An SDK lets you know which functions you can call on a specific platform, thereby giving you information on how to make the best use of the tools that you have. The SDK is purposefully missing an end-goal, however, so the developer is free to make any type of program they wish, including those which are useless and have no appeal to anyone.

The shrutis provide information on how to use the material elements for one’s advantage. That advantage is from the perspective of spirit and not matter. The difference between the two is that spirit is eternal, unchangeable, and immutable. Spirit transcends both birth and death and the bounds of space and time. Matter, on the other hand, is limited by these factors. Without knowledge of the shrutis, without hearing the information on how to make the best use of the material elements around us, the bewildered spirit soul will wrongly identify with that matter and thereby remain in illusion.

Identifying with something that doesn’t represent our identity is always a losing proposition. The body is the matter we interact with in the closest proximity, so it forms the obvious basis for false identification. The direction of scripture starts by emphatically declaring that the living being is not their body. At the same time, the material elements are required to keep the spirit within the temporary covering known as the body. The field is not shunned entirely, as through interaction with material elements the proper end can be reached.

Not surprisingly, that end is devotion to the origin of life and matter, Lord Krishna. As He is all-attractive, devotion to Him proves to be most beneficial. Yet even in the absence of the pursuit of devotional service, whatever is required for sustenance in life is provided by Krishna. The earth, with its many fields that hold trees and grass, can provide for man’s needs. The minerals and jewels naturally resting within the mountains provide the opulence, the water from the rain the nourishment for the crops, and the sunlight the warmth from the cold.

Scarcity is only an issue when there is complete ignorance of the shrutis and the person who instituted them. The attitude is akin to walking into the kitchen and saying that there is nothing to eat. “Mom, we’re out of food. What are we going to do? I don’t want to starve.” The problem is that there is a full supply of food. Grains, vegetables, water, and juices line the shelves of the refrigerator, but since the petulant child doesn’t see any finished items on the table, they think there is scarcity. If they simply went into the fridge and prepared the items they wanted they could see that there is plenty to eat.

In a similar manner, this earth contains the seeds to grow endless crops. It is said that the relatively small land mass of the United States grows enough food to feed the entire world every year. This means that from a very short section of earth enough food can be grown so that no one would ever starve. Thus where is the question of scarcity? Shri Krishna provides His innumerable spirit souls all they need to survive. If they don’t take the time to make use of those gifts, what can be done? Spirit is never bereft of its ability to choose. The unbreakable affinity for free will explains the natural yearning for freedom within systems of government and the constant migration of people from areas of oppression to those lands where there are few restrictions on liberty.

Knowing the properties of the creator, that He is all-attractive and extremely benevolent, helps in taking up devotional service with firm faith, love and determination. If you don’t believe in a particular path’s effectiveness, why will you stick to it? If there are reservations about accepting the ultimate path of bhakti-yoga, or love and devotion to God as the primary occupation in life, then the same conclusion can still be reached by studying the nature around us. Those things that we really do need are readily available. Land is not scarce and neither is water. Maybe in certain areas there is famine because of mismanagement in leadership, but the items themselves are not lacking. On the other hand, those things that we really don’t need, like expensive meats, jewelry and high end appliances, are not very abundant. They cost more to procure, serving as nature’s way of reminding us of what is important in life.

“Just as within the earth are found every kind of seed and within the sky live all the stars, Tulsidas knows that Shri Rama’s holy name is the reservoir of all dharma.” (Dohavali, 29)

Just as the earth is ready to produce bountiful resources to serve the needs of a limitless number of people, the holy name, the most powerful tool of bhakti-yoga, can save countless souls looking for an eternal engagement that provides undying happiness. As there is variety in the desires of the different sparks of spirit roaming this and many other lands, there are multiple paths leading to spiritual enlightenment. To find which one is best, we can apply the same screening test used for determining which material items are worth possessing. Those tools of transcendentalism that are the most expensive, which are the most difficult to accept and more restrictive in terms of entry, are the ones we don’t need. This means that suffering through strict austerity, sitting in difficult yoga postures for hours on end, and becoming a high scholar of Vedanta through philosophical speculation are not the best ways to find the Absolute Truth.

The aforementioned pursuits are difficult and limit the number of people that can be accepted. Bhakti-yoga, on the other hand, is the easiest to implement and can be perfected by any person, regardless of age or level of intelligence. The quintessential act of bhakti is the chanting of the holy names, “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare”. Within the names of Krishna and Rama can be found the limitless blissful features and transcendental pastimes of the Lord. The holy names sequenced in the maha-mantra can be sung, recited on a set of japa beads, or simply repeated within the mind over and over. It is the travelling field of bliss, ready to produce the ingredients necessary for feeding the mind starved of spiritual association. From divine association in bhakti-yoga the precocious developer makes the best use of the SDK that is the shrutis by writing an application that turns everything in this world into an object of value. Whether living in opulence or squalor, heat or cold, light or darkness, the spiritually infused devotee finds Krishna’s association, which is never out of stock.

In Closing:

From SDK tools of language take,

So that custom applications can make.

Whatever thing you want you can do,

No direction given, choice up to you.

Same way the earth with its many seeds,

Grow food so that hunger to be appeased.

To think there is scarcity is mistake,

From nature’s gifts resources create.

With Krishna how can scarcity exist?

Chant His names, from foolishness desist.

Genome sequencing finds unknown cause of epilepsy

Krishna Veeramah handles a sample of stored DNA at the UA Genetics Core, housed at the UA's BIO5 Institute. This facility specializes in high-throughput DNA processing and sequencing. Credit: Patrick McArdle/UANews

Only 10 years ago, deciphering the genetic information from one individual in weeks to find a certain disease-causing genetic mutation would have been written off as science fiction.

It was the time of the Human Genome Project, and it had taken armies of sequencing robots working around the clock for almost a decade to unravel the complete sequence of the human genetic code – referred to as the genome – by churning out the DNA alphabet letter by letter.

A team headed by Michael Hammer from the University of Arizona applied Next Generation Genome Sequencing to decipher the entire DNA from a patient who had died from sudden unexplained epileptic death.

Not only did they find the likely culprit – a previously unknown mutation in a gene coding for a sodium channel protein in the central nervous system – but their findings offer some emotional relief and explanation to the patient's family in the absence of a medical diagnosis and any family history of similar disease. The research team published its results in the March American Journal of Human Genetics issue.

"If you have a small child with severe epilepsy, not knowing what is causing it is a big burden to carry for the family," said Michael Hammer, an associate professor in the UA's department of ecology and evolutionary biology and a research scientist at the UA's Arizona Research Labs. "It leaves a lot of open questions and sometimes even feelings of guilt."

Because the severity of the patient's condition, the absence of the disease in both parents and her younger sibling and no family history of epilepsy, Hammer and first author Krishna Veeramah ruled out an inherited genetic defect as the cause. Rather, they suspected a de novo mutation, a "typo" in the genetic alphabet generated by pure happenstance, most likely in the paternal germ line.

"We were tasked with the search for the proverbial needle in a haystack," said Veeramah, a postdoctoral fellow in Hammer's lab. "To find a de novo mutation, we must comb through the entire genome. In the old days, we could have generated a list of candidate genes and sequenced them one gene at a time. Unfortunately, that's a lot of work, especially in the brain where you have thousands of genes that could be involved in a process leading to a neurological disorder."

"The development of Next Generation Sequencing Technology in recent years provides a much more powerful approach to actually analyze all the genes simultaneously. So that's what we wanted to do."

"We are looking at the entire genome level," Hammer added, "something that was not possible until very recently."

"For a neurological disorder like this, the cause could be a mutation in a particular gene; it could be a certain sequence that was rearranged; or it could be a sequence that was deleted or duplicated, changing the number of gene copies."

"We all have variations in the number of copies of certain genes, but they're not necessarily bad," he explained. "But sometimes that variation can cause disease."

"For example, some percentage of previously unexplained intellectual disability is associated with genomic rearrangements."

In this case, the researchers did not find a smoking gun from looking at copy number variations, leaving point mutations, small insertions, or deletions of DNA letters as a likely cause.

Using the sequencing technology capabilities of Complete Genomics, Inc., between 96 and 97 percent of the patient's DNA sequence, as well as the genomes of her parents and her sibling, was deciphered within a few weeks.

Veeramah pointed out that each of the roughly 3 billion base pairs that make up the human DNA alphabet was covered by at least 50 reads.

"This is important because whole genome sequencing still makes a lot of errors so you have to double up on your efforts to get the accuracy you need."

The family's DNA sequences turned out to stray from the human reference genome in about 5 million places. This may sound like a lot, but because only about 2 percent of the human DNA sequence contains actual genes, most of those variations fall into non-coding regions of the genetic material.

In the next step, Hammer's team had to determine what those variations meant. Using databases of known genes, they checked which were located in actual gene sequences and which would change the amino acid sequence of the respective protein they encoded. In the end, they were left with about 13,000 mutations.

They hoped that somewhere in that pool of candidates was that one mutation that had caused the girl's epilepsy and possibly led to her death.

To whittle down the number of possibilities, the team screened for mutations that seemed to violate the laws of Mendelian inheritance.

"De novo mutations will look like they don't obey the rules by which we know genetic material is inherited," Veeramah explained. "The patient will have a variant not found in the parents or sibling. We found 34 sites that fit this pattern."

On average, in one individual, only one spontaneous mutation springs up within the coding region of a gene. Therefore, finding 34 told the team that most of those mutations were sequencing errors.

Veeramah said: "Ten of them had already been listed in public databases, meaning they occur in normal individuals and should not be disease-causing. They're probably just systematic artifacts of the sequencing process, so we could eliminate them."

The team sequenced the remaining 24 variations by standard methods, and as expected, only one was a real mutation. The variant, which was not previously associated with any human epilepsy disorders, consisted of a wrong letter in a gene that serves as the blueprint for a protein with an essential role in how nerve cells communicate with each other.

"These channels perform extremely critical functions," Veeramah said, "which is illustrated by the fact that their structure is very similar from fruitflies to fish to lizards to humans. Just by looking at how highly conserved those proteins have remained over millions and millions of years of evolution, it is pretty clear that the mutation we found is particularly damaging and shouldn't really occur."

Identifying a mutation in a critical nervous system component in a patient afflicted with severe and otherwise unexplained epilepsy would have been reason enough to stop the study and declare the case closed.

"We decided to take it a step further and actually see if we could find out the exact consequences of that mutation," Veeramah said.

To that end, the team performed electrophysiological studies on this particular mutation. The researchers teamed up with geneticist Miriam Meisler at the University of Michigan to insert the faulty gene into cultured neural cells. They studied what happened when they subjected the cells to a mild electric current, just as they would experience when stimulated by another nerve cell in the central nervous system.

"When the voltage is increased, there is a sudden opening of sodium channels," Veeramah said. "Shortly afterward, they close really quickly and the voltage goes back to normal. And that's essentially how normal neurons communicate, how electrical signals are sent around the brain and the body."

"In contrast, the mutant channel proteins opened as quickly as they should, but some failed to close quickly, and some didn't close at all," Veeramah explained. "All this results in the electrical signal not being turned off properly. These changes predicted increased neuronal excitability and seizures."

"The bottom line is that we can use whole genome sequencing to find mutations that underlie those severe cases of epilepsy and take it beyond the benchmark in the literature right now by doing functional studies to confirm that we have found the right mutation," Hammer said.

The Hammer lab plans to establish a diagnostics facility to make whole genome sequencing available to the clinical community to help children with early onset epilepsy and other rare undiagnosed disorders.

"We want to repeat this experiment with many more patients," Hammer said. "We are ready to accept DNA from patients and carry out this type of study."

Veeramah added: "Right now we are doing basic research to identify all the mutations involved. Down the line the goal is to design drugs that specifically target the affected pathways."

Hammer said the new approach could prove cost-efficient, too, at the current cost of about $5,000 per fully sequenced genome, or $1,000 to sequence all the known human genes.

"The regular tests these patients would run up during their lifetime would vastly outweigh the cost of a whole-genome sequencing experiment."

He added: "Once you know what causes the condition, you can begin to be informed about management. Finding cures certainly is in the longer-run picture, even though it is not an option now. Until then, families suffer because they're just sitting in the dark and wondering. Did something go wrong during pregnancy? Did I do something to cause the baby's disorder? Finding the faulty gene can provide a vast amount of relief for the family."

Provided by the University of Arizona

"Genome sequencing finds the unknown cause of epilepsy." February 23rd, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-genome-sequencing-unknown-epilepsy.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Education and Astrology

Making Right choices & taking right Decisions at the right times is very important for every student who wants to make his or her Career.

The planets in your horoscope, or birth chart, indicate the type of education and profession that could suit you best. It can also highlight and reveal the periods best suitable for your education.

According to astrology, the third house is the home of education. It represents your capacity for learning, and intellectual capabilities. Ruled by the Sun sign Gemini, and the planet Mercury, the third house provides the ground for what type of schooling and subjects, including college learning, could suit you best.

The third house mirrors your talent for common sense too — the most uncommon thing in our highly competitive world!

When Mercury is in its own house or in a Kendra from the ascendant or remains in a trine the native gets flourished with high education, vehicles and property. If Mercury, Jupiter and Venus are in the ninth house the native is renowned scholar.

The ninth house, in like manner, is thought to be the home of higher learning. It covers areas such as the sciences, spirituality, philosophy, and so on. The ninth house is ruled by the Sun sign Sagittarius, and the planet Jupiter.

The ninth house represents what you can achieve, not just in terms of learning, but also through your intuitive and exploratory abilities.

Career by Planets

Astrology can indicate when career advances and setbacks are most likely. Using a combination of transits and planetary dashas, we can usually determine which times will yield favorable results and which times may prove more difficult. The dasha of a poorly placed, afflicted planet may prevent any advance despite the best efforts and hard work on the job. Conversely, the period of a well-placed planet may bring a very easy promotion or a new job that seems to just fall in one’s lap.

The critical issue then lies in determining which planets can yield good results and which will not. This is rarely straightforward and requires careful consideration of the natal and dashamsha (D-10) charts.

Career by Planets
Sun authority, politicians, scientists, leaders, directors, government employees, doctors, jewelers

Moon nursing, the public, women, children, travelling, marine, cooks, restaurants, import/export.

Mars fire, energy, metals, initiative, weapons, construction, soldiers, police, surgeons, engineers.

Mercury intellect, writing, teaching, merchandise, clerks, accountants, editors, transport, astrologers.

Jupiter finance, law, treasury, scholars, priests, politicians, advertising, psychologist, humanitarian.

Venus pleasures, luxuries, beauty, art, music, entertainment industry, sex industry, hotels.

Saturn the aged, death, real estate, labour, agriculture, building trades, mining, monk.

Rahu researchers, engineers, physicians, medicine/drugs, speculators, aviation, electricity, waste.

Ketu idealism, enlightenment, religion, secret affairs, poisons, metaphysics.

Uranus scientists, inventors, computing, astrologers, lab technicians, electronics.

Neptune photographers, movies, marine, oil, pharmaceutical, psychics, poets.

Accepting negative feelings provides emotional relief

Many adults suffer from mild to moderate depression and/or anxiety symptoms. This puts them at increased risk of developing a mental disorder. Proactive intervention by the mental health services is therefore crucial if we want to reduce this risk.

“The problem is, people suffering from this type of depression and/or anxiety symptoms often fall below the radar,” says Martine Fledderus at the University of Twente (the Netherlands). “A possible explanation for this is that the existing range of self-help and group therapy courses focuses solely on reducing psychological distress. They concentrate on what is wrong with a person, thereby putting even greater emphasis on the symptoms. Intervention is focused on the disease model.” This does not have to be the case, according to Fledderus, who defended her PhD thesis on the subject on February 10.

Martine Fledderus’ PhD thesis evaluated the course Living to the full for adults with mild to moderate depression symptoms. “This particular course focuses on promoting positive mental health, instead of eliminating suffering, or reducing symptoms. This is in line with new guidance on the recognition and treatment of mental health disorders — chiefly that mental health is more than just the absence of a mental illness. Positive mental health encompasses the social, psychological and emotional well-being of a person and various studies indicate that mental health may be a protective factor against mental disorders.”

The Living to the full course is based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), supplemented with mindfulness exercises. The most important process in this therapy is to increase psychological flexibility, i.e. the ability to accept negative feelings and thoughts, to be in touch with the present moment, and to act in every situation according to one’s own values. This helps develop the ability to lead a meaningful and valuable life and thus to become more psychologically flexible.

Fledderus’ study evaluated the course Living to the full as a group therapy course and a self-help course with e-mail counselling. Both the group therapy course and the self-help course were effective in reducing psychological symptoms (such as depression, anxiety and fatigue) and in increasing psychological flexibility, mindfulness and positive mental health. The findings of her thesis showed that by promoting psychological flexibility, psychological distress is reduced and positive mental health is increased.

Thirteen mental health services and many primary care psychologists are now offering the popular group therapy course Living to the full. The first self-help course received more than six hundred applicants within five days. This is confirmation that a course focusing on positive mental health is popular and accessible. Given the evident beneficial effects of such a course and its wide accessibility, Fledderus believes that the Living to the full course could have a significant impact on public mental health.

Provided by University of Twente

"Accepting negative feelings provides emotional relief." February 23rd, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-negative-emotional-relief.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

A Leap Forward for Plastic Solar Cells

An inexpensive, polymer-based device breaks a record, reaching 10.6 percent efficiency.

• BY KATHERINE BOURZAC

Audio »

A record-breaking polymer solar cell made by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, converts 10.6 percent of the energy in sunlight into electricity. The performance of the cell surpasses the previous record, 8.6 percent, set in July of last year by the same group.

Polymer solar cells are flexible, lightweight, and potentially inexpensive, but their performance lags behind that of conventional cells made from inorganic materials such as silicon. The goal of the researchers, led by Yang Yang, professor of materials science and engineering at UCLA, is to make a polymer solar cell that can compete with thin-film silicon cells. Yang's record-breaking cell, enabled by a new photovoltaic polymer developed by a Japanese company,Sumitomo Chemical, is a sign that researchers are getting better at making solar cells from these finicky materials.

The new plastic solar cell combines two layers that work with different bands of light—a polymer that works with visible light and one that works with infrared light. "The solar spectrum is very broad, from the near infrared through the infrared to the ultraviolet, and one single solar-cell component can't do it all," says Yang.

The best inorganic solar cells are also multilayer devices, but making multilayer organic solar cells has been difficult. Polymers can be printed from solution, like printing ink on paper, which is both a primary advantage of the technology and a liability, says Alan Heeger, who shared the Nobel Prize in 2000 for his co-discovery of conductive polymers. "There are no high temperatures involved, and manufacturing is simple," he says. But figuring out the right solvents to print each layer in a cell without bleeding into the one below it is tricky. The more layers, the more complex the problem becomes. Matching the electrical properties of each layer is also a challenge, as has been connecting them together.

Yang says he wants to make a polymer solar cell with an efficiency of 15 percent. He notes that efficiency numbers typically drop by about a third when solar cells are taken out of the lab and sold in working modules. A polymer solar cell that tests at 15 percent efficiency in the lab is likely to make a module with 10 percent efficiency, which Yang believes is good enough to compete with thin-film silicon solar.