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Jordan News
15-03-2025
- Health
- Jordan News
Blood Donation Offers Unexpected Health Benefits - Jordan News
A recent study has revealed that regular blood donation may provide health benefits that go beyond saving the lives of others. A team of scientists from the Francis Crick Institute conducted a study involving 217 men who donated blood more than 100 times, comparing them with 212 men who donated blood fewer than 10 times. اضافة اعلان The results showed that frequent blood donation is associated with mutations in the DNMT3A gene, which plays a key role in blood cell production. In laboratory experiments, the scientists sought to understand why this mutation is common among frequent blood donors. They exposed genetically modified human blood cells to the hormone erythropoietin (EPO), which helps regulate red blood cell production. They found that cells carrying the DNMT3A mutation grew 50% faster when exposed to this hormone compared to normal cells. Regular blood donation increases EPO levels in the body, which enhances the regeneration of stem cells and improves blood health. Dr. Dominique Bonne, head of the Blood Stem Cell Laboratory at the Crick Institute and the lead author of the study, stated: "Our study sheds light on how our genes interact with the environment and how we age. It seems that activities that reduce the stress on blood cell production enhance stem cell regeneration, supporting their healthy growth instead of causing disease." In another experiment, the scientists mixed cells with the DNMT3A mutation with cells exposed to leukemia, and found that cells from frequent blood donors grew at a faster rate. This suggests that regular donation may strengthen healthy cells and limit the growth of cancerous cells. However, the scientists emphasized the need for further studies to determine the exact effect of blood donation on cancer risk, particularly as blood donors are typically healthy individuals, which may affect the results. Bonne clarified, "Our sample size is relatively small, so we cannot conclusively say that blood donation reduces mutations linked to leukemia. However, this study provides valuable information about how certain mutations impact blood cell health." In addition to its potential role in cancer prevention, regular blood donation may also help lower blood pressure. A study involving 292 blood donors found that individuals with high blood pressure saw improvements in their readings after regular donations, with more noticeable improvements the more often they donated. (Original Source: The Sun)
Yahoo
29-01-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Reeves's plans will boost UK but it will take a long time
A third runway at Heathrow, "Europe's Silicon Valley" between Oxford and Cambridge and relaxing planning constraints. There were a lot of different announcement's in Rachel Reeves's push to revive the UK economy. The key takeaway, the bottomline of her plans, is that these changes will work - they will boost UK growth. It is an admittedly low bar for an economy that has not been growing much. But this is a specific type of growth, long term growth, funded by global investors, who had started to have their doubts about Britain. A global Silicon Valley-like super city connecting Oxford and Cambridge to new and old population centres in between is the sort of offer that the world's biggest funds would fall over themselves to invest. Plug that in to the City and to the Nobel Prize winners at Google's AI firm DeepMind and the biomedical research centre Crick Institute in Kings Cross, and the country would have a stunning global asset in the 21st Century economy. Putting money into an integrated grand development plan connecting two of the world's greatest centres of learning, involving housing, labs, offices, hospitals, reservoirs, roads and rail, is a no brainer for the world's biggest investors. This has long been dreamed of, but the reality is that Britain has severely restricted the growth of its most compelling world beating technological and economic assets. That appears to end here with Reeves' plans. Successive governments have simply failed to deploy their political capital to ram through growth-enhancing changes such as Heathrow expansion and especially the potential Golden Triangle of future growth between Oxford and Cambridge. There has been so much talk about these grand plans. It never seemed to happen, and that reputation had risked becoming embedded in the rolled eyes of the international super investors who own most of Britain's infrastructure. There were plenty of numbers in the speech. But the one number that matters above all here is 156 - the size of the PM's majority. The chancellor's speech communicated that she will deploy that near total executive power to flatten the sort of opposition that has prevented or critically delayed these sorts of plans in the past. Indeed, I understand that the cautious, even lukewarm response from Heathrow so far, has been countered in meetings with government with a promise that they will indeed use that bumper majority. Farmers noisily protested after the Budget changes to Inheritance Tax. There will be many more groups with placards beeping their horns outside airports and in the Fens, if this agenda is actually delivered. In many ways that is an early test of the government's seriousness of trying to transform investment in the country. The other test is how visible and how quickly changes will materialise. Ministers say especially in the Oxford-Cambridge Silicon Valley of Europe plan, this will be seen within the parliament. But that hoped-for long term gain has been built on some short-term pain in the economy. Consumer and Business confidence fell around the Budget decisions. The chancellor has indicated there will be further tough decisions on welfare and benefits as the government aims to cut back the ballooning costs of supporting people out of work or in work but also receiving benefits. Businesses in hospitality and retail are bearing a disproportionate burden of the Budget tax rises. From April they will pay more in national insurance as well as a higher minimum wage. Runways in west London, and laboratories in Oxford may not compensate those businesses. The other big challenge here is just how nimble the government is going to be. The government's AI strategy released earlier this month might already have been overtaken by events in Hangzhou at DeepSeek. Will all these data centres that Reeves has planned now actually be needed? Strategies for industry, infrastructure and trade are also now on the way. Timing here is everything. The question is whether the fruits of long term growth will come through quickly enough.
The Guardian
27-01-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
AI-based automation of jobs could increase inequality in UK, report says
The automation of millions of jobs will increase inequality in the UK unless the government intervenes to support small businesses and workers through the transition, according to a major report into the future of work. Ministers need to act in the interest of those who will be made unemployed or whose jobs dramatically change, said the report by the Institute for the Future of Work (IFOW) thinktank, in order to prevent skills shortages hitting employers and workers from suffering a decline in job satisfaction and wellbeing. Artificial intelligence software is expected to become a widespread tool in factories, offices and in the public sector, demanding new skills, the IFOW said. However, a survey of 5,000 UK employees found 'a pervasive sense of anxiety, fear and uncertainty' about the introduction of AI technology, and what it could do to their work. Christopher Pissarides, a Nobel prize winner in economics and the report's main author, said ministers needed to consider 'how AI can bring productivity and prosperity, without putting people under more intense stress and pressure? How can it help us identify and deliver new opportunities, without exacerbating growing divides cross the country?' He said the three-year report, which also surveyed 1,000 businesses, discovered that while some major employers had developed tools to mitigate the effects of automation and AI to support staff, many smaller employers struggled to comprehend how they would transform the workplace and what skills and training staff would be needed in order to adapt over the next decade. The report makes a series of recommendations, including establishing science centres – like London's Crick Institute – in regional cities to prevent the capital and the arc between Oxford and Cambridge from dominating innovations in fast-growing bio-technologies and securing a disproportionate number of high paying jobs. Pissarides, professor at the London School of Economics, said devolving decision making to the regions would also be an important element of the reforms needed, while unions should also be given new powers of 'digital access, collective rights to information and new e-learning roles, backed by the Treasury'. He said this would be in 'recognition of the key role of unions to deliver meaningful partnership working'. James Hayton, professor of innovation at Warwick Business School, and a member of the report team, said the impact on jobs, skills, and job quality should not be blamed on AI, but how firms used it. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion 'It is how firms and managers choose to implement it that is so crucial in bringing benefit to their workforce and overall productivity,' he said.
