Herbal Health Spot

Unemployed young people could suffer from “permanent psychological scars” due to being out of work, according to a survey by the Prince’s Trust.

A YouGov poll of more than 2,000 people aged between 16 and 25 showed one in 10 of those who had been out of work had turned to drugs or alcohol abuse.

And those not in education or training were twice as likely to feel down, depressed, isolated or rejected.

Latest figures show almost a million 16-25s are unemployed.
The Prince’s Trust provides loans to young people to help them back into work and is calling on the government and businesses to do more to help the younger generation escape unemployment.

Professor David Blanchflower, who was involved in the research, told the BBC that the government needs to help these young people as soon as possible.

“You need to get these folks into the labour market, and give them experience, because we know that in May, June and July the class of 2010 are coming out. We need to take this as a national crisis because it’s going to flood us again later in the year,” he said.

‘Tomorrow’s unemployable’
The Prince’s Trust has launched a new campaign to raise £1m a week to support unemployed and disadvantaged young people.

The trust said its survey showed that 25% of unemployed young people believed their joblessness had caused arguments with their parents or other relatives, and 15% said their life lacked direction.payday advance

Martina Milburn, the charity’s chief executive, said: “The emotional effects on young people are profound, long-term and can become irreversible. We must act now to prevent a lost generation of young people before it is too late.”

She said young people “bore the brunt of the recession”, which left “one in five 16-to-24 year olds out of work”.

Scientists from Heidelberg University Hospital have identified a mechanism through which malaria parasite move from the salivary gland of a mosquito through a person’s skin into the body. Malaria is caused by plasmodia, tiny parasites that enter the human body through the saliva of a mosquito when it bites.

They use active movements to enter into the bloodstream and from there to cells of the liver and finally into blood cells. By using microscopic technique, the research team discovered that the parasite continually alternates between phases of rapid gliding and phases of firm adhesion to the surface.

The interaction of these two processes probably enables the parasite to move rapidly over a long time, which is necessary for successful transmission of the disease. The researchers observed how the sporozoites adhere to several sites on the surface via the TRAP protein and then use the short actin filaments to push their body past these adhesion points.

“The parasite can stretch forward while still attaching with its rear end – thus building up elastic energy. At the moment when the rear adhesion is detached, energy is released and the sporozoite glides forward rapidly,” said Dr. Friedrich Frischknecht. The researchers call this mechanism the “stick-slip” method. The speed of movement is regulated by the formation and turnover of adhesion sites, the existence and dynamics of which have been described for the first time. The research is published in the prestigious journal “Cell Host and Microbe”.

China said Monday it had recorded 659 swine flu deaths in 2009, nearly all of them in the last two months of the year, and warned that the danger of mass outbreaks still existed in certain areas. The health ministry said the total number of A(H1N1) infections recorded since the virus was first detected last year stood at 120,940.

At the end of October, the reported death toll stood at just six. The number of recorded deaths then spiked, reaching about 180 at the start of December and 659 by the end of the month.

“The danger of an explosion of outbreaks in some places exists, and the number of fatalities and serious cases will remain at a rather high level,” said Liang Wannian, director of the ministry’s emergency response office. Serious difficulties remained in containing the spread of the virus in rural areas and at schools, Liang told a press conference.

Ministry officials had already warned of a “grim” winter flu outlook, and are urging caution ahead of the February Lunar New Year holidays, when hundreds of millions of people swamp roads and railways to visit family.

In November, renowned medical whistle-blower Zhong Nanshan, who helped expose the scale of the 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, said the true A(H1N1) death count was being covered up.

The government responded by ordering more accurate case reporting by officials. China has so far vaccinated 49.9 million people, Liang said — the largest campaign in the world, but still only a small proportion of the country’s 1.3 billion people.