HEALTH AND WELLNESS

                                               [1]         MALE DEPRESSION          One of the oldest things about depression is the lingering myth that it is mostly a female disorder from which real men are genetically protected. Specialists say depression remains hidden in men because men visit health professionals less often than women, with less opportunity to talk about their problems and they are less able to articulate emotional distress. So doctors are more familiar with symptoms that are common in female victims of depression. In women depression has a notably different constellation of symptoms than in men. What are some of the symptoms common in male depression? Anger, fatigue, irritability, aggression, a drop in work performance, and a tendency for the sufferer to isolate himself from loved ones and friends. Sadness does always accompany depression –especially for men.                                              [2]         PROBLEMS CONNECTED WITH OBESITY  

                                              Scientists have long known that the eyes of mammals contain neurons that respond to light and set the body’s internal, or circadian, clock. It was long assumed that this light-sensing function was performed by known visual cells called rods and cones. But in 1999, report the journal Science, researchers found that “mutant mice lacking all rods and cones [who are thus functionally blind] still have light-responsive clocks.” This led researchers to the conclusion that “some other cells in the eye had to be sensing light”            Now these elusive light sensors have been found. Although intermingled with the image-forming rods and cones, the sensors form “a separate visual circuit, running in parallel with this image-forming visual system,” explains Science. The newly discovered circuit’s functions include governing pupil size and melatonin release, synchronizing the body’s internal clock with the cycle of light and dark and other

                                                [1] BRITAIN’S RELIGIOUS CONVERSIONS             Britons are swapping religions at a faster rate than ever, with about 1,000 converting every week, reports The Sunday Telegraph. Anglicans are becoming Roman Catholics, and vice versa, Jews are becoming Buddhists, Muslims are becoming Anglicans and Roman Catholics Jews.” Islam, Buddhism, New Age Movements, and paganism are gaining the most converts. Dr. Ahmed Andrews of England’s Derby University, himself a convert, says: “There are between 5,000 and 10,000 white Muslim converts in this country, and most of the ones I know are former Catholics.” Jews make up 10 to 30 percent of converts to Buddhism. Anglican conversions to Catholicism peaked after the Church of England decided to ordain women. According to Rabbi Jonathan Romain, “people feel a spiritual vacuum so they look outside their own religious backgrounds.”                                                 [2] LIFE-STYLE AND

                                                    In the hands of a trained craftsman, a lump of soft clay can be formed into practical any shape. Embryonic stem cells are the living equivalent of that piece of moist clay; they have the prospective to give rise to virtually all of the over 200 cell types making up the human body. How do they do this? Consider what happens to a newly fertilized egg cell.             Soon after fertilization an egg cell begins to divide. In humans about five days of cell division results in a minute ball of cells called a BLASTOCYST . It is essentially a hollow sphere that is composed of a shell-like outer cell layer and a small cluster of about 30 cells called the inner cell mass, which is attached to the inside wall of the sphere. The outer cell layer becomes the PLACENTA ; the inner cell mass, the human embryo.          At the blastocyst stage, though, the cells of the inner cell mass have not yet begun to specialize into specific cell