Blast at Nigerian soccer viewing center kills men, young boys

 Tuesday's explosion at a soccer viewing center in northeastern Nigeria claimed the lives of several men and young boys watching the Brazil-Mexico World Cup match.

There are conflicting reports of the number of people affected by the blast. An updated number is expected later on.

A hospital source said Wednesday that 21 people were killed in the explosion and another 27 were injured. The source from Sani Abacha Specialist Hospital in Damaturu spoke on the condition of anonymity, because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

"All the victims are young men and boys. They sustained burns, ruptured tissues, shattered bones," he said.

A police official placed the death toll lower Wednesday, saying 10 people had died. The hospital spokesman said its count was based on the number of bodies delivered .e police 

 Volatile northeastern Nigeria is the home of the Boko Haram group, the militant Islamists who abducted scores of schoolgirls in April.

A Yobe police official in Damaturu told CNN the extremist group had distributed leaflets to the viewing centers in three different languages warning them not to open during the World Cup.

Maina Ularamu, a local official in Madagali, in Adamawa state, also confirmed to CNN that people in the town -- which has been the target of previous Boko Haram attacks -- had been warned against watching the soccer matches.

"Letters have been distributed to viewing centers in Adamawa state warning people not to gather to watch the World Cup games," she said. "We suspect these letters to be from Boko Haram. People are very afraid and are not leaving their homes."

According to a police official, "This is Boko Haram's area of operations."

To try to combat the growing threat from the militants, the Nigerian government placed Yobe, Borno and Adamawa states under a state of emergency last year.

Cellphone in trouser pockets affects male fertility

Cellphone in trouser pockets affects male fertility

Cellphone in trouser pockets affects male fertility

If you keep your cell phone in your trouser pocket, beware. It is extremely dangerous for you and may jeopardize your chances of becoming father.

Cellphone in trouser pockets affects chance of becoming father. So you should take utmost precaution in this regard.

If you keep your cell phone in your trouser pocket, beware. It is extremely dangerous for you and may jeopardize your chances of becoming father.

These days people want to keep more and more powerful smartphones in their pockets. Many of us are not satisfied with using one handset and are using huge sized multiple handsets. And most of the people find their trousers pockets the best place to keep that expensive handset(s).

Now a latest study says that it may affect a person’s chance to becoming father if the handset is kept in trouser pocket over a long period of time.

Fiona Mathews a professor of biosciences atUniversity of Exeter in Britain says, “This study strongly suggests that being exposed to radio-frequency electromagnetic radiation from carrying mobiles in trouser pockets negatively affects sperm quality…This could be particularly important for men already on the borderline of infertility, and further research is required to determine the full clinical implications for the general population”.

The report says that as many as many as 14 percent of couples in high and middle income countries have difficulty in conceiving. The researchers who were led by Mathews conducted a systematic review of the findings from 10 studies, including 1,492 samples.

They say that they measured the sperm quality in three different ways including motility, viability and concentration. In control groups, 50-85 percent of sperm have normal movement. They concluded that this proportion fell by an average of eight percentage points when there was exposure tomobile phones. Similar effects were seen for sperm viability.

Father’s Drinking Habits May Alter Son’s Genes

Do you regularly drink to excess? Even before conception, a son’s vulnerability for alcohol use disorders could be shaped by a father who chronically drinks to excess, a significant study indicates.

“It is possible for alcohol to modify the dad’s otherwise normal genes and influence consumption in his sons, but surprisingly not his daughters,” said senior investigator Gregg Homanics, a professor at University of PittsburghSchool of Medicine in the US.

In lab settings, male mice that were chronically exposed to alcohol before breeding had male offspring that were less likely to consume alcohol and were more sensitive to its effects.

Previous human studies indicate that alcoholism can run in families, particularly father to son, but to date only a few gene variants have been associated with “Alcohol Use Disorder” and they account for only a small fraction of the risk of inheriting the problem, Homanics said.

“We examined whether a father’s exposure to alcohol could alter expression of the genes he passed down to his children,” Homanics added.

For the study, researchers chronically exposed male mice over five weeks to intermittent ethanol vapour, leading to blood alcohol levels slightly higher than the legal limit for human drivers. Then, they mated them to females who had not been exposed to alcohol.

Compared to those of ethanol-free sires, adult male offspring of ethanol-exposed mice consumed less alcohol when it was made available and were less likely to choose to drink it over water.

The researchers plan to examine other drinking models such as binge drinking, identify how alcohol modifies the genes and explore why female offspring appear unaffected