Senator John McCain, the Vietnam war hero turned senator and presidential candidate, has died aged 81.

Mr McCain died on Saturday surrounded by his family, according to a short statement released by his office.

He was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour in July 2017 and had been undergoing medical treatment.

His family announced Mr McCain, who left Washington in December, had decided to stop treatment on Friday.
https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-us-canada-45312217?__twitter_impression=true

An outstanding scientist whose disability never prevented from making ground-breaking discoveries.

Any attempt to defend the ridiculous inevitably leads flagrant display of stupidity.

You sound like a young. Why don't you buy a UTME form, go and study Medicine, become a doctor and show how to be a competent doctor.

Pidgin2:
They are all useless and stupid beings who are only after their pockets. Many of them do not know what they are doing.

They keep complaining about lack of equipment but how does one explain a situation where a so called doctor administers a dangerous injection without asking for the patient's medical history? Does it take standard equipments before a so called doctor askes this question that may or may not lead to a patient's death? This recently happened to someone I know

Our doctors are killers, quick to pass all blame on government but failing to do their own part. If you are a medical doctor, what will it cost you to read up on the drugs you prescribe for your patients and the adverse effects as regards their medical history, do you need government to provide equipment for this too?

If you have the money seek treatment abroad, our doctors are trial and error doctors, very careless with no sense, bunch of proud idiots.

Birds of a feather flock together. Show me your friend and I'll tell you who you are. Olosho United.

[quote author=wolesmile post=62945054]Wait o!
Shebi that is the sea of Galilee. Why don't they just step unto the sea and walk on water to show us what great powers lie in whatever name they believe in.[/quote
The Men of God are not as mumu as their followers na. Too much money to be made, you want them to drown. Yeye dey smell.

The day common sense becomes common, smartness loses most of its value. According to Mark Twain, religion was invented when the first conman met the first fool.

Oko muwonleru things. Run! Run!! Run!!!

There's no permanent friend or enemy. What's permanent is interest.

Okay oh.

Enough of this jare.

Body clock scientists win Nobel Prize
By James Gallagher
Health and science reporter, BBC News website
1 hour ago
From the section Health Share this with Facebook Share this with Twitter Share this with Messenger Share this with Email Share
body clock cartoon imageImage copyrightGETTY IMAGES
Three scientists who unravelled how our bodies tell time have won the 2017 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine.
The body clock - or circadian rhythm - is the reason we want to sleep at night, but it also drives huge changes in behaviour and body function.
The US scientists Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young will share the prize.
The Nobel prize committee said their findings had "vast implications for our health and wellbeing".
A clock ticks in nearly every cell of the human body, as well as in plants, animals and fungi.
Our mood, hormone levels, body temperature and metabolism all fluctuate in a daily rhythm.
Even our risk of a heart attack soars every morning as our body gets the engine running to start a new day.
Body Clock
The body clock so precisely controls our body to match day and night that disrupting it can have profound implications.
The ghastly experience of jet lag is caused by the body being out of sync with the world around it.
In the short term, body clock disruption affects memory formation, but in the long term it increases the risk of diseases, including type 2 diabetes, cancer and heart disease.
"If we screw that system up we have a big impact on our metabolism," said Prof Russell Foster, a body clock scientist at the University of Oxford.
He told the BBC he was "very delighted" that the US trio had won, saying they deserved the prize for being the first to explain how the system worked.
He added: "They have shown us how molecular clocks are built across all the animal kingdom."
The prize winnersImage copyrightEPA
Image caption
Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young have won the highest accolade in science.
The trio's breakthroughs were on fruit flies, but their findings explain how "molecular feedback loops" keep time in all animals.
Jeffrey Hall and Michael Rosbash isolated a section of DNA called the period gene, which had been implicated in the circadian rhythm.
The period gene contained instructions for making a protein called PER. As levels of PER increased, it turned off its own genetic instructions.
As a result, levels of the PER protein oscillate over a 24-hour cycle - rising during the night and falling during the day.
They also discovered a gene called timeless and Michael Young found one called doubletime. They both affect the stability of PER.
If PER is more stable then the clock ticks more slowly, if it is less stable then it runs too fast. The stability of PER is one reason some of us are morning larks and others are night owls.
Together, they had uncovered the workings of the molecular clock inside the fly's cells.
Dr Michael Hastings, who researches circadian timing at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, told the BBC: "Before this work in fruit flies we really didn't have any ideas of the genetic mechanism - body clocks were viewed as a black box on a par with astrology."
He said the award was a "fantastic" decision.
He added: "We encounter the body clock when we experience jet lag and we appreciate it's debilitating for a short time, but the real public health issue is rotational shift work - it's a constant state of jet lag."
Follow James on Twitter.
Line
Previous winners
2016 - Yoshinori Ohsumi for discovering how cells remain healthy by recycling waste.
2015 - William C Campbell, Satoshi Ōmura and Youyou Tu for anti-parasite drug discoveries.
2014 - John O'Keefe, May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser for discovering the brain's navigating system.
2013 - James Rothman, Randy Schekman, and Thomas Sudhof for their discovery of how cells precisely transport material.
2012 - Two pioneers of stem cell research - John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka - were awarded the Nobel after changing adult cells into stem cells.
2011 - Bruce Beutler, Jules Hoffmann and Ralph Steinman shared the prize after revolutionising the understanding of how the body fights infection.
2010 - Robert Edwards for devising the fertility treatment IVF which led to the first "test tube baby" in July 1978.
2009 - Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak for finding the telomeres at the ends of chromosomes.
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-41468229

Love is all that matters. It's a medical condition that can be treated.

Nigeria is a secular country going by the constitution, which gives every citizen the right to belong to any religion. Also, religion generally is founded on the values of love, tolerance, peaceful co-existence, forgiveness and compassion. It is, therefore, not a platform for the expression of hatred and violence. Hence, many religious perspectives have value for human life, moral responsibility and creativity, for which free will is often regarded as a requirement. This may account for why free will and religion are closely intertwined; but should not be seen as a licence for irresponsibility. Ipso facto, religion should not be used to explain how the world’s evils are compatible with the existence of God; nor used to explain any form of religious crisis or fundamentalism, which of recent has been an entry point to extremism that is now creeping into even the university system. This is unfortunate.

Recently, in a bid to prevent a religious crisis from degeneration, the management of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife locked up two mosques located around the halls of residence on campus over a crisis rocking the Muslim Students’ Society of Nigeria (MSSN).

Furthermore, the university suspended all religious activities in all its halls of residence. This is a pointer that stories relating to religion and crises are beginning to rear their ugly heads into the university.


Religious teachings admonish faithful to “love your neighbour as yourself.” And so why are people in crisis in the name of religion? Therefore, it is a sad commentary that religious devotees are practising the opposite of what is being preached. More worrisome is the fact that in the universities, where we are supposed to be training future leaders is where religion is leading to a crisis.

Thus, the activities of MSSN at OAU has future implications, because it appears that we are training people who are narrow minded and may become easy prey for international terrorists. Again, that religious intolerance is happening in the ivory tower shows that we have lost the culture of the academia, which promotes philosophy, research and empirical evidence where things are proven. Does it mean that critical thinking has been jettisoned for primordial sentiments? Having crisis on a campus because of religion is not in the tenets of the academia and seminal thinking. Certainly, this is destroying the culture of the ivory towers! Thus, the MSSN crisis at OAU may signal a new kind of reality that universities are now being infiltrated by non-university interest under the guise of religion. In addition, it is a demonstration of low emotional intelligence among any people.

The question that may arise at this juncture is: what is responsible for religious crisis?
Religious intolerance usually is occasioned by the perception that one religion is superior to the others. Thus when they are faced with opposition, they resort to violence, which is often fatal. This perception can either be intra-religious (between the same religious sects) or inter-religious (between different religious sects).

So, crisis pertaining to religion can be attributed to over exaggeration of a particular religion. It is usually planted and watered by teaching of wrong doctrine, ignorance, misinformation and hatred. Again, religion is now increasingly becoming a source of conflict because of bigotry. Religious bigotry is ugly and defeats the essence of religion, which is based on belief and conviction; not imposition. Therefore, the inability of an individual to accept or accommodate other people’s different religious beliefs is a deadly social disease. All these result in a faceoff or religion-related crises that may lead to death. Haven’t we already lost enough innocent souls from politically motivated crises, militancy and insurgency in Nigeria? Do we also have to lose people for religious intolerance?


Obviously, if this is not tackled, religion may become one of the tragedies that will befall the larger society in disguise, and may take several lives, which will cause pains. As such, the universities should be above board and watchful because university students compelling people to conform to a particular sect could be an entry point to extremism and so should not be allowed to creep into our universities. As the university environment is liberal, and should be used for critical thinking and engagement for informed decision-making and national cohesion. So, school authorities, religious leaders, as well as law enforcement agencies should be vigilant and resourceful at this juncture to nip this in the bud.

Religious leaders should sensitise their followers on the doctrines that promote spiritual, social and moral health of the society. And school authorities and law enforcement agencies should fish out those that show signs of intolerance, try them and if found guilty punish them accordingly to serve as a deterrent to others.

Peace is all we need now!https://guardian.ng/opinion/before-religion-derails-oau/

The battle continues......

Maternal mortality is gravest form of human right abuse. The major causes of maternal mortality are preventable. It is shameful that 40000(Forty thousand) Nigerian women die yearly from complications of pregnancy and there no protests. I think a state of emergency should be declared to tackle this problem. But trust Nigerians, it's never going to be their portion.

Abimbola Adelakun

One of the rituals of the Christmas and New Year celebrations I have come to look forward to over the years is the gale of prophecies that emanate from Nigerian men of God. I enjoy watching the regular cycle of these divine annunciations that are supposedly channelled to this planet through the antennae of the prophet’s body get denounced by non-fulfilment. It is also worthy of note that considering how people now rip prophets and prophecies apart, clerics like Pastor Enoch Adeboye are now being cautious about what they push out. For instance, Pastor Adeboye’s 2016 prophecy about the discovery of a new Sexually Transmitted Disease never came to pass. For 2017, he re-calibrated his methods and chose to be ambiguous. He said this year there would be “surprises,” a prediction so vague it could blanket virtually any occurrence in the world. He could have stated what would be surprising about the surprises he prophesied.



Then there is Prophet T.B. Joshua – the prophet who takes the word of God from news reports – who claimed that President Muhammadu Buhari would be pressured to devalue the naira but would remain adamant. As if the absurdity they emit is not bad enough, another prophet, a certain Dr. Olagoriye Faleyimu, prophesied that Joshua himself would die! There is a noticeable trend in the prophecy galore: one, despite the non-fulfilment of previous ones, these “men of God” double down and saturate the atmosphere with weirder predictions. From prophecies about the impeachment of Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State, to foretelling bloodbaths, and to claiming that certain banks would fold up, Nigerian prophets are running amok like a chicken with severed head. Two, they are preying on individuals whose stories can create controversies for them to milk.

For instance, there is the case of the popular actress, Funke Akindele, whom Faleyimu stated might die barren unless she carried out special prayers or married a pastor. Faleyimu, aware that in an environment like Nigeria the “fruit of the womb” is an occult industry of sorts, knows how to curry attention. But did it ever occur to him that the woman he publicly targeted might not even have had prior desires to be a mother? Her reproductive choices from now on are no longer based on her personal agency, they are circumscribed between whether his prophecy will come true or not. Faleyimu evidently did not care about the ethics of his so-called profession. Instead, he assumes he has proprietary rights over other people’s personal issues and he goes ahead to confirm this with his two-for-10-kobo prophesies. Did it bother him that holding out the woman’s reproductive organs on his church altar, and passing it to the public to chew on, and also circulating it in the media, is actually an agonising violation of her body?

This Nostradamus habit of targeting public figures is not a particularly new cultural development. For decades, Nigerian prophets of various denominational extractions have claimed that certain musicians or actors would either fall sick or die, sending those who were so fingered into a frenzy when the public turns around at them and expects their reaction. This mode of using prophecies to goad people into certain action reads almost like Shakespeare’s Macbeth where the eponymous hero committed murders and was driven to madness because he was influenced by the probability of witches’ predictions coming to pass.

When you have a prophet like Apostle John Suleman loudly proclaim that forces in Aso Rock would poison Mrs. Aisha Buhari, you know even if the woman decides to discard the prophecy, there are others in Aso Rock who will get an idea even if only the goal is to test God. If these forces succeed, the pastor triumphantly holds up a poisoned First Lady as a confirmation of his unction. Subsequently, he will be patronised by other superstitious people who will not see the chain of event as a mere artificial creation. And if it happens that she was not poisoned or evades poisoning attempts, Suleman will still claim that he averted impending disasters through prayers. To facilitate the latter option, Suleman would expect the First Lady to send for him, probably make him her spiritual adviser, and also grant him unfettered access to Aso Rock along with resources that could bring him profit.

But at some point, one should ask these pastors and prophets what the point of their trade is all about?

While there is some entertainment value in the prophecies they unleash on the public annually, the sheer banality of it all is excruciating. For example, when a world famous pastor like Adeboye prophesies that there will be more weddings in 2017, one wonders what use a prophetic anointing has when it does not see beyond mundane issues? Why can they not look ahead and prophesy how science and technology will shape our lives in the years to come? Some of the technologies we – the society and its subset of the church itself – rely on are fruits of ordinary men’s visions and predictions.

A number of technocultural products that we use today were once predicted by various futurists (especially science fiction writers) who did not pretend God was speaking through them. They looked ahead, saw how the world could be reshaped and they (or some other people) committed resources to making these predictions possible. Some of the ideas that have shaped our lives were mental peregrinations of writers who were sometimes under the influence of alcohol but they foresaw ideas that have been of great use to humankind. John Bellamy, for instance, talked about credit cards as far back as in 1888; John Brunner, in 1969, wrote about electric cars in futuristic 2010; Aldous Axley wrote about consciousness-altering substances at least two decades before scientists started experimenting it; George Orwell’s Big Brother’s omnipresent eyes is a prediction that has come to pass in startling ways such that we defer to his works when we talk of the surveillance state.

Here in Nigeria, year after year, our prophets’ outlook remains pessimistic and obsessively focused on garnering cheap attention. These prophets hardly ever transcend predicting marriages, barrenness, deaths, economic and social failures, and punishment. Why is the God that rules our lives so seemingly petty? We can of course argue that our prophets and their predictions are a reflection of our society and the things that we hold dear. When a prophet can cause a ruckus by looking at a celebrity’s history and predicting whether she achieves a rudimentary goal such as birthing a child in the age when science is already creating artificial uterus, it is as telling on the rest of the society as it is on the prophet himself.

Elsewhere, scientists are thinking of meeting a burgeoning world population with ideas of food production that mimics subsistence farming of times past. They are exploring how people can grow organic food in their houses in urban centres by simulating the conditions that make plants grow in traditional farms. In Nigeria, we are largely stuck on outmodelled farming methods, barely evolving to develop sophisticated tools to manage food production for our population. The governor of Imo State, Rochas Okorochas, at some point asked civil servants to take two days off work to practise subsistence farming. The same ideas that birthed Operation Feed the Nation and Green Revolution still resurge in the new millennium because our society is neither evolving nor innovating for its own good. Everything is banal. Nothing, not even prophecies that supposedly spring from the throne of God every year, is inspiring enough to help us to push beyond our present stage of socio-cultural evolution. We are the children of Sisyphus, cursed to repeat the same mediocre task forever. http://punchng.com/nigerian-prophets-new-year-prophecy-galore/

Let me start by stating I'm not writing this to champion unbelief or to ridicule religion. This is just to show that unbelief or skepticism about religion is commoner than most people think and it isn't necessarily a bad thing. Unbelief is common among people though the tendency to express it varies in different regions or countries. Countries that are liberal in their outlook to life tend to accommodate dissenting opinions unlike conservative countries. As a result, the prevalence of unbelief is noted to be higher in liberal societies unlike conservative countries where the consequences of professing unbelief can lead social ostracization, loss of family support or death penalty depending on the laws of the land.
It is important to stress that the degree to which people are free to express their opinion on any subject(including religion) is an indirect index of development of the society. Enforcing conformity is inimical to human progress as most innovative ideas often start as dissident voices to the prevailing thoughts. The West have made significant progress in improving the standard of living due to tolerance and encouragement of freethought majorly in form of Science and Philosophy.
The Nigerian religious folks should realize that skepticism(commonly espoused by unbelievers) and critical thinking are crucial to national development which we all earnestly yearn for.
The unbelievers(atheists and agnostics) should desist from referring to religious folks as stupid or gullible. You don't make people respect your point of view by insulting them. The Nigerian unbelievers should construct dispassionate and convincing points to justify their perspectives.
In conclusion, this quote from John Stuart Mill is apt: "The world would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments-of those most distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue-are complete skeptics in religion."

On the evidence of such archaeological finds as Lucy, the australopithecine female unearthed in Ethiopia's Hadar region, Africa is the cradle of the human race. Africa was also home to notable ancient civilisations—the Egypt of the Pharaohs, the Ashanti Empire of the Gold Coast, and the Zimbabwe settlements in the south. Given such a head start, it is ironic that Africa should now find itself at the bottom of the ladder in terms of human development. Most of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa lag far behind other developing nations with respect to critical health indicators such as maternal and infant mortality and life expectancy.
Granted, Africa's legacy of particularly exploitative colonial occupation by European powers is partly to blame. However, Africans themselves must bear the responsibility for failing to create an enabling environment for better health—safe water and sanitation, secure supply of food and nutrition, education, and higher status of women—in the period since the continent's political emancipation that began with Ghana's independence in 1957.1 Instead, many countries have seen both opportunity and resources squandered on political adventurism, civil wars, misguided macroeconomic policies, and greed.
Nevertheless, with sufficient will, commitment, and vision, and by making the right choices, Africa can successfully address its own health challenges and start to contain the morbidity and mortality from diarrhoeal diseases, childhood infections, parasites, and maternal and perinatal morbidity, as well as emerging and re-emerging infections of HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis. Africa's health challenges are not insurmountable. In most cases, the solutions are straightforward and inexpensive, requiring only that the right political choices be made.
The World Health Organisation has identified poverty in Africa as “the single biggest threat to health.”2 And in an unpublished speech to Kenya's Medical Research Foundation on 19 January 2001, Britain's minister for the Department for International Development, Baroness Amos, warned that “in the short term and in the long run, African governments, leaders, and individuals will need to exercise more leadership, set agendas, and mobilise far more resources, for a sustained response to lift people out of poverty.”
Africa's top priority must therefore be to grow the economy, which in the view of the World Bank means buying into the global economic movement. David Dollar of the World Bank cites the example of Vietnam, where the proportion of the population in poverty fell from 75% in 1988 to 37% in 1999 as the country “opened up to foreign trade.”3 This view is not universal, however, as has been evident in the “anticapitalism” protests spanning the globe from Seattle to Genoa. Certainly, globalisation has been responsible for crises in banking and currency, steep rises in poverty rates, and widening income inequalities in many countries.4
While African countries cannot escape the global movement, they must embrace it with the necessary circumspection. Two harms of globalisation come to mind. The first is the use of Africans to test drugs from which they will never benefit, either because the drugs are too costly or because they are designed to treat conditions that largely affect industrialised nations.5 The second is the global proselytising of first world values that are detrimental to Africa. The ban on dicophane (DDT)—a cheap and highly effective weapon against malaria—because it was thought to be harmful to US bird species cost millions of African lives, whereas no African has ever died from the normal use of dicophane.6
The mere accumulation of national wealth is not sufficient to deal with poverty as a health risk. Africa must commit to equity and economic distributive justice in order to address national health needs. With this approach, the poor Indian state of Kerala has achieved health indicators almost comparable to those of the United States despite its per capita income being 99% less and its spending on health being $28 per capita compared with $3925 in the United States.7 China, Costa Rica, and Sri Lanka have made similarly impressive gains.8
This means that African countries must address the highly unequal access to personal health care that exists between rich and poor, between urban and rural populations, and between ethnic groups. They must develop coherent and equitable national health systems, redirecting resources from curative care in urban hospitals using expensive high tech equipment to primary and preventive care encompassing immunisation, nutrition, and other elements of an enabling environment for better health.
Finally, Africa must look for what South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki, speaking of HIV and AIDS, characterised as “African solutions to African health problems.” To this end, Africa must revive its universities, once heralded as beacons of progress and hope. In the late 1960s and early 1970s African medical schools such as those at Ibadan (Nigeria), Accra (Ghana), and Makerere (Uganda) were counted among the finest in the developing world, engaged in the basic and applied research of typically African health problems. Only when a critical mass of African researchers working on African soil has been restored will Africa begin to generate new knowledge relevant to its most pressing health problems.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1122627/

SAMUEL AWOYINFA
A pastor, identified as Wale Fagbere, became motionless while trying to destroy a shrine in Ketu, a community in Ayetoro, Yewa North Local Government Area of Ogun State.
Our correspondent gathered that the pastor whose church could not be ascertained as of the time of filing this report reportedly became motionless and speechless after he had allegedly destroyed some shrines in the town.
It was gathered that the cleric was reported to have told his congregation that he had a revelation to destroy all the shrines in Ketu community.

After being found transfixed in the shrine, residents of the area raised the alarm, following which custodians of the shrines came to the place.
The priests insisted that they had to perform some rites before the cleric could regain his sense.
The rites were performed following the intervention of Alaye of Ayetoro, Oba Abdulaziz Adelakun, who appealed to the priests to ‘release’ him.
The state acting Police Public Relations Officer, Abimbola Oyeyemi, confirmed the incident, adding that the cleric might be charged for “sacrilege and malicious damage.”
He said, “The command got the report at its division in Ayetoro that one Evangelist Wale Fagbere went to Ketu to destroy traditional worshippers’ shrines. After the destruction, the man became motionless and could not talk.
“When the policemen visited the place, the traditionalists said the subject could not be taken away until some rites were performed. The victim was revived and handed over to his family for more spiritual cleansing.”http://punchng.com/pastor-stuck-shrine-trying-destroy-idols/

About 80,000 naira.

STOCKHOLM/LONDON | BY SIMON JOHNSON AND BEN HIRSCHLER
Three scientists from Japan, China and Ireland whose discoveries led to the development of potent new drugs against parasitic diseases including malaria and elephantiasis won the Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday.

Irish-born William Campbell and Japan's Satoshi Omura won half of the prize for discovering avermectin, a derivative of which has been used to treat hundreds of millions of people with river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, or elephantiasis.

China's Tu Youyou was awarded the other half of the prize for discovering artemisinin, a drug that has slashed malaria deaths and has become the mainstay of fighting the mosquito-borne disease. She is China's first Nobel laureate in medicine.

Some 3.4 billion people, most of them living in poor countries, are at risk of contracting the three parasitic diseases.

"These two discoveries have provided humankind with powerful new means to combat these debilitating diseases that affect hundreds of millions of people annually," the Nobel Assembly at Sweden's Karolinska Institute said.

"The consequences in terms of improved human health and reduced suffering are immeasurable."

Today, the medicine ivermectin, a derivative of avermectin made by Merck & Co, is used worldwide to fight roundworm parasites, while artemisinin-based drugs from firms including Novartis and Sanofi are the main weapons against malaria.

Omura and Campbell made their breakthrough in fighting parasitic worms, or helminths, after studying compounds from soil bacteria. That led to the discovery of avermectin, which was then further modified into ivermectin.

The treatment is so successful that river blindness and lymphatic filariasis are now on the verge of being eradicated.

Omura, 80, said the real credit for the achievement should go to the ingenuity of the Streptomyces bacteria, whose naturally occurring chemicals were so effective at killing off parasites.

"I really wonder if I deserve this," he said after learning he had won the prize. "I have done all my work depending on microbes and learning from them, so I think the microbes might almost deserve it more than I do."

Omura is professor emeritus at Kitasato University in Japan, while Campbell is research fellow emeritus at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey.

“This was the work of a team of researchers so it is by no means my work, it’s our work," said Campbell, 85, who learned of his prize in a pre-dawn phone call from Reuters that woke him at his home in North Andover, Massachusetts.

"In the first decade, there were 70 authors that I co-authored papers with. That gives you some idea of the number of people involved," he said.

TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE

Tu, meanwhile, turned to a traditional Chinese herbal medicine in her hunt for a better malaria treatment, following the declining success of the older drugs chloroquine and quinine.

She found that an extract from the plant Artemisia annua was sometimes effective but the results were inconsistent, so she went back to ancient literature, including a recipe from AD 350, in the search for clues.

This eventually led to the isolation of artemisinin, a new class of anti-malaria drug, which was available in China before it reached the West. Tu, 84, has worked at the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine since 1965.

World Health Organization spokesman Gregory Hartl said the award of a Nobel prize for the discovery was a great tribute to the contribution of Chinese science in fighting malaria.

"We now have drugs that kill these parasites very early in their life-cycle," said Juleen Zierath, chair of the Nobel Committee. "They not only kill these parasites but they stop these infections from spreading."

Death rates from malaria have plunged 60 percent in the past 15 years, although the disease still kills around half a million people a year, the vast majority of them babies and young children in the poorest parts of Africa.

The 8 million Swedish crowns ($960,000) medicine prize is the first of the Nobel prizes awarded each year. Prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace were first awarded in 1901 in accordance with the will of dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel.

Last year, the medicine prize went to three scientists who discovered the brain's inner navigation system.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/05/us-nobel-prize-medicine-idUSKCN0RZ0U020151005

Plagiarism things....

Wailing wailers things

Okay na

Fibroid does not have an evidence based herbal remedy as at today.

Lee Kuan Yew, the statesman who transformed Singapore from a small port city into a wealthy global hub, has died at the age of 91.

Mr Lee served as the city-state's prime minister for 31 years, and continued to work in government until 2011.

Highly respected as the architect of Singapore's prosperity, Mr Lee was also criticised for his iron grip on power.

Under him freedom of speech was tightly restricted and political opponents were targeted by the courts.

The announcement was made "with deep sorrow" by the press secretary of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Mr Lee's son.





"The Prime Minister is deeply grieved to announce the passing of Mr Lee Kuan Yew, the founding Prime Minister of Singapore," his office said in a statement.

It said Mr Lee passed away peacefully at the Singapore General Hospital at 03:18 local time on Monday (19:18 GMT on Sunday).

'Meritocratic nation'

A charismatic and unapologetic figure, Mr Lee co-founded the People's Action Party, which has governed Singapore since 1959, and was its first prime minister.

The Cambridge-educated lawyer led Singapore through merger with, and then separation from, Malaysia - something that he described as a "moment of anguish".

Speaking at a press conference after the split in 1965, he pledged to build a meritocratic, multi-racial nation.

But tiny Singapore - with no natural resources - needed a new economic model.

"We knew that if we were just like our neighbours, we would die," Mr Lee told the New York Times in 2007.

"Because we've got nothing to offer against what they have to offer. So we had to produce something which is different and better than what they have."

Through investment in schooling, Mr Lee set about creating a highly-educated work force fluent in English.

He reached out to US investors to turn Singapore into a manufacturing hub, introducing incentives to attract foreign firms.

Singapore also became a centre for the oil-refining industry. The city-state grew wealthy and later developed into a major financial centre.

But building a nation came with tight controls - and one of Mr Lee's legacies was a clampdown on the press.

These restrictions remain today. In 2014, Singapore stood at 150 in the Reports Without Borders World Press Freedom Index, below countries like Russia, Myanmar and Zimbabwe.

Dissent - and political opponents - were ruthlessly quashed.

Today Mr Lee's PAP remains firmly in control. There are currently six opposition lawmakers in parliament.

Other measures, such as corporal punishment, a ban on chewing gum and the government's foray into matchmaking for Singapore's brightest - to create smarter babies - led to perceptions of excessive state interference.

But Mr Lee remained unmoved.

"Whoever governs Singapore must have that iron in him. Or give it up," he told a rally in 1980. "I've spent a whole lifetime building this and as long as I'm in charge, nobody is going to knock it down."

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.... Carl Sagan.

why