Mohamed Iqbal Pallipurath is a Web Designer and Software Consultant.
Currently slaving as faculty at TKM College of Engineering.
A fundamentalist Muslim but not an extremist.
Pro Palestine but not anti any Country.
He has improved the quality of IIT Delhi and IIT Kharagpur just by studying at those places for M. Tech. (Thermal Engineering) and PhD (Cryogenic Engineering).
A chronic procrastinator. Now under throes of creating his Thecal Matter.
Interests: Amateur Astronomy, Judo
Tuesday, February 28, 2017
Monday, February 27, 2017
B Vitamins Reduce Schizophrenia Symptoms: Study
B Vitamins Reduce Schizophrenia Symptoms: Study
(Copyright Dreamstime)
Thursday, 16 Feb 2017 11:40 AM
High doses of B vitamins reduce the symptoms of schizophrenia, says a study published in the journal Psychological Medicine. Researchers found that adding B vitamins, including B6, inositol, and B12 significantly improved symptoms of the debilitating condition.
Schizophrenia is a severe, chronic mental disorder that makes people feel they have lost touch with reality, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Symptoms can include hearing voices or seeing things that aren’t there, and thinking others are reading their minds or planning to harm them. Up to 3.5 million Americans have been diagnosed with the disorder.
Currently, patients are treated with antipsychotic drugs. Although patients typically experience remission of symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions within the first few months of treatment, 80 percent of patients relapse within five years.
For the new study, researchers identified 18 clinical trials with a combined total of 832 patients receiving antipsychotic treatment for schizophrenia. They found that B-vitamin interventions which used higher dosages or combined several vitamins were consistently effective for reducing psychiatric symptoms, whereas those which used lower doses were ineffective.
The evidence also suggested that B-vitamin supplements were most beneficial when they were added to medicine regimens early after diagnosis.
“Looking at all of the data from clinical trials of vitamin and mineral supplements for schizophrenia to date, we can see that B vitamins effectively improve outcomes for some patients,” said lead author Joseph Firth of the University of Manchester.
“This could be an important advance, given that new treatments for this condition are so desperately needed.”
“This builds on existing evidence of other food-derived supplements, such as certain amino-acids, which have been beneficial for people with schizophrenia,” said co-author Jerome Sarris of Western Sydney University.
“These new findings also fit with our latest research examining how multi-nutrient treatments can reduce depression and other disorders.” Recent research, also conducted at the University of Manchester, found that aerobic exercise can ease the symptoms of schizophrenia. Researchers analyzed data from 10 clinical trials and found that 12 weeks of aerobic exercise, including treadmills and exercise bikes, significantly improved memory and concentration.
“We are searching for new ways to treat these aspects of the illness, and now research is increasingly suggesting that physical exercise can provide a solution,” said Firth.
Monday, February 20, 2017
Godhra train burning was BJP’s pre-planned conspiracy
“Godhra train burning was BJP’s pre-planned conspiracy to create communal divide for winning Gujarat election”
“The burning of Sabarmati Express at Godhra was a pre-planned conspiracy”, claim leaders of Patel agitation.
They have alleged that it was planned to create communal divide and set off riots so that the BJP could win the Gujarat election in 2002.
The stunning statement of the Patel leaders has once again brought to fore the mystery of the fire in the Sabarmati Express, which led to riots across Gujarat.
Rahul Desai and Lal Bhai Patel, who are leaders of the Patidar Samiti, who have now openly said that Godhra train fire was pre-planned. The BJP is a communal party and had there been no communal carnage, Narendra Modi won’t have been re-elected as chief minister in 2002, said Desai.
Earlier too there have been questions raised over the circumstances surrounding the mysterious train blaze at Godhra. But Patel agitation leaders’ charge has come as a surprise. Patels are angry at the crackdown on them, especially, the leader of agitation Hardik Patel, who is in jail on sedition charges.
The bodies of the dead were taken around along with processions, rousing tempers and the result was riots all over the State. It is alleged that ‘go ahead’ was given from the top and there were verbal orders to police and administration to let rioters attack Muslims, their houses and establishments.
The result was a pogrom which led to over 1,000 killings and mass rapes. This became a blot on the secular fabric of India. Separate commissions looked into the train fire and the riots that followed but the mystery had remained.
Wednesday, February 08, 2017
10 Terms Not to Use with Muslim
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The Muslim guardian of Israel's daily bread
The Muslim guardian of Israel's daily bread
For more than a decade, an Arab hotel manager has helped Orthodox Jews to observe the Passover – by buying up forbidden foods. Ben Lynfield reports
Monday, 6 April 2009
QUIQUE KIERSZENBAUM
Jaaber Hussein, a hotel manager, prepares to take control of much of Israel's bread, beer and pasta
enlarge
When Jaaber Hussein signs an agreement with Israel's Chief Rabbis tomorrow, he will be inking the only Arab-Jewish accord sure to be meticulously observed by both sides. The deal will make him the owner for one week of all bread, pasta and beer in Israel – well a huge amount of it anyway. The contract, signed for the past 12 years by the Muslim hotel food manager, is part of the traditional celebrations ahead of the Jewish holiday of Passover.
Jews are forbidden by biblical injunction to possess leavened bread, or chametz, during Passover and ironically an Arab is needed to properly observe the holiday. The agreement with Mr Hussein offers a way of complying with religious edicts without having to wastefully destroy massive quantities of food.
Through legal acrobatics, the forbidden goods belonging to the Israeli state are simply sold to Mr Hussein for the duration of Passover and then revert back to the state once the holiday is over. Like the government's adherence to the Sabbath and to dietary laws, the ceremony sets Israel apart as a Jewish state that upholds religious traditions.
Mr Hussein, a resident of the Israeli Arab town of Abu Ghosh near Jerusalem, sees nothing odd in the arrangement, believing there are affinities between his Islamic faith and Judaism. He relishes the role the Jewish state has assigned him, one that puts his picture on the front pages of Israeli newspapers year after year.
"I see this as a way to help people with whom I work and live," he said.
Mr Hussein was a natural choice for the ritual because he works in a hotel that stringently observes Jewish dietary laws. He even keeps some of the strictures at home.
"There are many things that are close in the two religions. If not for politics, the religions would get along very well," he explains. One example he cites is the halal slaughtering of meat, which he likens to kosher slaughtering.
Passover, which celebrates the biblical exodus from slavery in Egypt, starts on Wednesday night and lasts for seven days, eight outside Israel.
The reason for the prohibition of leavened bread is, according to the Bible, that the Israelites departed Egypt in such haste that their bread did not have a chance to rise and so they ate the cracker-like unleavened bread known as matza.
Many of their descendants in modern Israel defer to this dictum every spring to the extent that a kind of fermented dough fixation suffuses the country. Housewives become the new slaves, scrubbing and vacuum cleaning to remove every trace of chametz. Religious men scald pots in the streets, making them kosher for the holiday.
For the Orthodox, there can be no half-measures. A single crumb that evades detection could spoil everything for Passover.
Those families who do not want the extra workload simply check in to kosher hotels and escape the ardour. Even secular Israelis stock up on pita bread and put it in their freezers so that they too have enough supplies to survive the week.
Tomorrow, Mr Hussein will put down a cash deposit of $4,800 (some 20,000 shekels or £3,245) for the $150m worth of leavened products he acquires from state companies, the prison service and the national stock of emergency supplies. The deposit will be returned at the end of the holiday, unless he decides to come up with the full value of the products. In that case he could, in theory, keep them all.
At the close of the holiday, the foodstuffs purchased by Mr Hussein revert back to their original owners, who have given the Chief Rabbis the power of attorney over their leavened products. "It's a firm, strong agreement done in the best way," Mr Hussein said.
But Israelis are divided on whether the state should be enforcing Passover. A law introduced by religious parties in 1986 bans the display of bread in public areas, except in those where there is a non-Jewish majority. But a court decision last year said it was legal for restaurants to sell leavened products during Passover on the grounds that they are not public spaces. The move sparked anger among the ultra-Orthodox Jews.
This year, ultra-Orthodox activists in Jerusalem sent warning letters to stores, telling them not to sell bread or pizza because this could bring divine punishment on the city. And the chief rabbinate called for supermarkets to install a computer program that would enable cash registers to detect unleavened products by their bar codes so sales could be stopped. Supermarkets cover over their chametz with papers, but the rabbis are concerned that some customers lift the covers and buy proscribed foods.
Variations of the contract between the Israeli state and Mr Hussein are being signed all over the world between selected non-Jews and rabbis, including those in the UK. The ceremony, like the absence of civil marriages in the country, reflects "some elements of theocracy" in the Israeli state, says Menachem Friedman, a sociologist at Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv. "Israel is a unique state – very modern on the one hand but with very strong religious traditional elements on the other. Every government keeps this ritual."
In one final Passover twist, the restaurants of Mr Hussein's town, Abu Ghosh, are gearing up for what is always their busiest week of the year, catering to secular Jews who want to get away from the holiday's dietary strictures.
"It is also nice that you have people who don't keep Passover, who eat leavened bread," Mr Hussein said. "It is good that we are also able to help the people who are not religious."
Despite his goodwill, the chief rabbinate staffers do not seem overly attached to Israel's Arab of Passover. "It is true he is enabling people to celebrate the holiday, but if he didn't do it, there are plenty of other people who would," said Avi Blumenthal, an aide to Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger.
Jews are forbidden by biblical injunction to possess leavened bread, or chametz, during Passover and ironically an Arab is needed to properly observe the holiday. The agreement with Mr Hussein offers a way of complying with religious edicts without having to wastefully destroy massive quantities of food.
Through legal acrobatics, the forbidden goods belonging to the Israeli state are simply sold to Mr Hussein for the duration of Passover and then revert back to the state once the holiday is over. Like the government's adherence to the Sabbath and to dietary laws, the ceremony sets Israel apart as a Jewish state that upholds religious traditions.
Mr Hussein, a resident of the Israeli Arab town of Abu Ghosh near Jerusalem, sees nothing odd in the arrangement, believing there are affinities between his Islamic faith and Judaism. He relishes the role the Jewish state has assigned him, one that puts his picture on the front pages of Israeli newspapers year after year.
"I see this as a way to help people with whom I work and live," he said.
Mr Hussein was a natural choice for the ritual because he works in a hotel that stringently observes Jewish dietary laws. He even keeps some of the strictures at home.
"There are many things that are close in the two religions. If not for politics, the religions would get along very well," he explains. One example he cites is the halal slaughtering of meat, which he likens to kosher slaughtering.
Passover, which celebrates the biblical exodus from slavery in Egypt, starts on Wednesday night and lasts for seven days, eight outside Israel.
The reason for the prohibition of leavened bread is, according to the Bible, that the Israelites departed Egypt in such haste that their bread did not have a chance to rise and so they ate the cracker-like unleavened bread known as matza.
Many of their descendants in modern Israel defer to this dictum every spring to the extent that a kind of fermented dough fixation suffuses the country. Housewives become the new slaves, scrubbing and vacuum cleaning to remove every trace of chametz. Religious men scald pots in the streets, making them kosher for the holiday.
For the Orthodox, there can be no half-measures. A single crumb that evades detection could spoil everything for Passover.
Those families who do not want the extra workload simply check in to kosher hotels and escape the ardour. Even secular Israelis stock up on pita bread and put it in their freezers so that they too have enough supplies to survive the week.
Tomorrow, Mr Hussein will put down a cash deposit of $4,800 (some 20,000 shekels or £3,245) for the $150m worth of leavened products he acquires from state companies, the prison service and the national stock of emergency supplies. The deposit will be returned at the end of the holiday, unless he decides to come up with the full value of the products. In that case he could, in theory, keep them all.
At the close of the holiday, the foodstuffs purchased by Mr Hussein revert back to their original owners, who have given the Chief Rabbis the power of attorney over their leavened products. "It's a firm, strong agreement done in the best way," Mr Hussein said.
But Israelis are divided on whether the state should be enforcing Passover. A law introduced by religious parties in 1986 bans the display of bread in public areas, except in those where there is a non-Jewish majority. But a court decision last year said it was legal for restaurants to sell leavened products during Passover on the grounds that they are not public spaces. The move sparked anger among the ultra-Orthodox Jews.
This year, ultra-Orthodox activists in Jerusalem sent warning letters to stores, telling them not to sell bread or pizza because this could bring divine punishment on the city. And the chief rabbinate called for supermarkets to install a computer program that would enable cash registers to detect unleavened products by their bar codes so sales could be stopped. Supermarkets cover over their chametz with papers, but the rabbis are concerned that some customers lift the covers and buy proscribed foods.
Variations of the contract between the Israeli state and Mr Hussein are being signed all over the world between selected non-Jews and rabbis, including those in the UK. The ceremony, like the absence of civil marriages in the country, reflects "some elements of theocracy" in the Israeli state, says Menachem Friedman, a sociologist at Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv. "Israel is a unique state – very modern on the one hand but with very strong religious traditional elements on the other. Every government keeps this ritual."
In one final Passover twist, the restaurants of Mr Hussein's town, Abu Ghosh, are gearing up for what is always their busiest week of the year, catering to secular Jews who want to get away from the holiday's dietary strictures.
"It is also nice that you have people who don't keep Passover, who eat leavened bread," Mr Hussein said. "It is good that we are also able to help the people who are not religious."
Despite his goodwill, the chief rabbinate staffers do not seem overly attached to Israel's Arab of Passover. "It is true he is enabling people to celebrate the holiday, but if he didn't do it, there are plenty of other people who would," said Avi Blumenthal, an aide to Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger.
Vatican offers Islamic finance system to Western Banks
Vatican offers Islamic finance system to Western Banks
The Vatican says Islamic finance system may help Western banks in crisis as alternative to capitalistm.
Friday, 06 March 2009 15:10
World Bulletin / News Desk
The Vatican offered Islamic finance principles to Western banks as a solution for worldwide economic crisis.
Daily Vatican newspaper, 'L'Osservatore Romano, reported that Islamic banking system may help to overcome global crisis, Turkish media reported.
The Vatican said banks should look at the ethical rules of Islamic finance to restore confidence amongst their clients at a time of global economic crisis.
"The ethical principles on which Islamic finance is based may bring banks closer to their clients and to the true spirit which should mark every financial service," the Vatican's official newspaper Osservatore Romano said in an article in its latest issue late yesterday.
Author Loretta Napoleoni and Abaxbank Spa fixed income strategist, Claudia Segre, say in the article that "Western banks could use tools such as the Islamic bonds, known as sukuk, as collateral". Sukuk may be used to fund the "'car industry or the next Olympic Games in London," they said.
They also said that profit share, gained from sukuk, may be an alternative to the interest. They underlined that sukuk system could help automotive sector and support investments in infrastructure area.
Islamic sukuk system is similar to bonos of capitalist system. But in sukuk, money is invested concrete projects and profit share is distributed to clients instead of interest earned.
Pope Benedict XVI in an Oct. 7 speech reflected on crashing financial markets saying that "money vanishes, it is nothing" and concluded that "the only solid reality is the word of God." The Vatican has been paying attention to the global financial meltdown and ran articles in its official newspaper that criticize the free-market model for having "grown too much and badly in the past two decades."
The Osservatore's editor, Giovanni Maria Vian, said that "the great religions have always had a common attention to the human dimension of the economy," Corriere della Sera reported today
Circumcision makes economic sense in fight against HIV
Circumcision makes economic sense in fight against HIV
But too few men have access to the procedure, say advocates.
Circumcision not only saves lives by reducing the risk of HIV infection, it also has clear economic benefits, according to research presented at the 17th International AIDS Conference in Mexico City.
But advocates say that these benefits are not being realized due to controversies surrounding the procedure.
Members of the Luo tribe have resisted circumcision programmes.AP PHOTO/J. DELAY
Three studies have found that circumcising adult men can cut their risk of HIV infection by 60%1,2,3, and scientists have estimated that the procedure could avert 3 million deaths due to HIV by 20264. The findings prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) last March to recommend that some countries with high HIV infection rates circumcise more men.
Today, researchers presented a complementary economic analysis of the procedure. Bertran Auvert of France's national biomedical institute INSERM and his colleagues constructed a computer model that examined the potential effects of rolling out large-scale public circumcision programmes in 15 sub-Saharan African countries. Fewer than half of the men in these countries, which contain 60% of sub-Saharan Africa’s HIV-infected population, have been circumcised.
The model predicted that large-scale circumcision programmes in Africa would cost US$672 million in their first decade. But after twenty years, the model predicted that governments would actually have saved $2.3 billion by preventing HIV infections if they circumcised 85% of men in the study area.
“By reducing the number of people infected, we could cut the budget devoted to antiretroviral therapy,” says Auvert. The work is due to be published on 6 August in PLoS ONE5.
Slow progress
Auvert also told the meeting that when his group offered free circumcision last year to all men aged 15-49 in 1,680 households in the Orange Farm region of South Africa, 65% of the men eventually underwent the procedure. Auvert said his data show that educational campaigns can convince men to be circumcised, even in regions with low rates of circumcision such as Orange Farm, where just 28% of men had been circumcised before the study.
Yet “the world has failed in scaling up circumcision to the degree that it can”, says Mitchell Warren of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition in New York. Health specialists conducting circumcision programmes in sub-Saharan Africa said yesterday that some leaders are dubious about the procedure. Opinions are greatly influenced by cultural and religious traditions, and circumcision is less common in southern than in northern Africa.
Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni has resisted circumcision programmes, as have leaders in Mozambique, Malawi and South Africa, says Dvora Joseph of the non-profit group Population Services International in Washington DC. And last month, the BBC reported that elders of the Kenyan Luo tribe had rejected plans to circumcise men in their community. “There are governments, donors and many other naysayers that are blocking access” to circumcision, Joseph says.
Robert Bailey of the University of Illinois at Chicago recently reported6 that 1,319 newly circumcised Kenyan men did not engage in riskier sexual behaviours — evidence, Bailey says, that they did not see the procedure as a ironclad defence against HIV. But there are no data yet to show whether men circumcised outside of clinical trials behave similarly. Because of this, the WHO has recommended that risk counselling be offered to those undergoing circumcision.
And Kim Dickson of the WHO called for international organizations to respect the sensitivities around the procedure in Africa. “I don’t think the Luo elders are against male circumcision — they are against people forcing it on them,” Dickson said. “Scale-up is slow, but we’ll get there.”
References
- Auvert, B. et al. PLoS Med. 2, e298 (2005). | Article | PubMed |
- Bailey, R. C. et al. Lancet 369, 643–656 (2007).
- Gray, R. H. et al. Lancet 369, 657–666 (2007).
- Williams, B. G. et al. PLoS Med. 3, e262 (2006).
- Auvert, B. et al. PLoS ONE 3, e2679 (2008).
- Mattson, C. L. et al. PLoS ONE 3, e2443 (2008) | Article | PubMed | ChemPort |
Saturday, February 04, 2017
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