Wednesday, 6 August 2008

Biological father of Madonna's adopted Malawian son has baby boy










LILONGWE, Malawi - Yohane Banda, the biological father of Madonna's adoptive Malawian boy David, has a new child.

The male child was born July 20, and he and his mother, Flora, are doing well, Banda told The Associated Press on Saturday.

"I am over the moon," said Banda, 33, wHO had lost two sons in babyhood to malaria.

Banda married Flora after the death of his wife Marita from childbirth complications shortly afterward the arrival of David on Sept. 25, 2005.

Banda and his aging mother, Asinati Mwale, decided to surrender David to the Home of Hope Orphanage because they could non afford to buy him formula milk after his mother's death.

Madonna, through her Raising Malawi charity, found him at the orphanage and filed for adoption. A Malawi high court judge in May sanctioned the adoption.

Banda said his new logos, who hasn't been named yet, was born at Mchinji District Hospital, the same one where David was.

"We idea of holding this

Kiss and Tell: Rock Legend Gene Simmons


Unlike many john Rock legends, Gene Simmons did not grow up in a base where music filled the halls.








"It was a unruffled household," Simmons said. "I come from a broken home. My father leftfield us when I was 6 or 7 geezerhood old, and my mother worked from sun up until sundown, so there was never any music at home."


Instead, he observed rock 'n' roll music "naturally" by listening to the tuner. Simmons aforementioned the early rock he listened to "crawled into my blood."


Born Chaim Witz in Haifa, Israel, in 1949, Simmons was the only child of his mother, Florence Klein, a holocaust survivor. Simmons and his mother immigrated to the United States when he was 8 years old. They settled in Queens, N.Y., and Chaim adopted a more American-sounding name: Eugene.


Simmons attended Richmond College in New York and graduated with a degree in education. After college he had a number of positions: He was a sixth-grade teacher in New York's Spanish Harlem, an assistant to the editor in chief of Glamour magazine, and a deli cashier.


In 1973, Simmons colonized on his real heat. Along with his friends Peter, Paul and Ace, he formed the band Kiss.


The idea behind the band was that they would "admit no prisoners." While Simmons admits that "we didn't quite know what that meant," the group took on a bold bravado
onstage that made it famous.


"At the beginning, this was a four-headed wolf called 'Kiss' that had the balls to get down up onstage and grab the existence by the scruff of its neck and proclaim. 'You wanted the best, you got the best, the hottest band in the human race,'" Simmons said. "The rally cry, the manifesto, is 'Rock and Roll All Night and Party Every Day' � it's a feel-good manifesto of a party."


Simmons' onstage fictitious character is known as "the Demon," which came from the documentary "Man of a Thousand Faces," about Lon Chaney, a silent film legend.


Simmons resides in Beverly Hills, Calif., with his

For Children With Neurofibromatosis Type 1, Statin Does Not Improve Cognitive Function


For children with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), a genetic disorder
that much leads to learning disability, cognitive function is not
improved by the lipid-lowering medication simvastatin, according to an article released on
July 15 in JAMA.




NF1 is characterized by the development of tumors in Schwann cells in
the uneasy system. It is genetically transmitted with an autosomal
dominant normal, which means that it is non linked to sex chromosome,
but only one parent needs to contribute the variant cistron for a child to
develop the disorder.




These tumors hind end be harmless but can buoy also compress nerve cells thus
causing damage. Clinically, the disease symptoms include skin
disorders, problems with small and large social movement skills, and cognitive
disabilities. Some examples of this cognitive handicap include personnel casualty
of visual-spatial skills, nonverbal long-term memory and attention
span.




Statins are a class of drugs soon used in adults to lower
cholesterol. Previously, some studies in mice bear indicated that
therapy with statins could improve some cognitive deficits. To
investigate the potential effects of a specific lipid-lowering medicine, simvastatin, on
the cognitive function of children with neurofibromatosis type 1,
Lianne C. Krab, M.Sc., of Erasmus MC University Medical Center, Sophia
Children's Hospital, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and colleagues
performed a randomized trial. A total 62 children received simvastatin
or a placebo treatment once daily for 12 weeks.




After the period of treatment, various cognitive tests were performed
to address nonverbal semipermanent memory, attention, and performance on
the prism version task, which measures the adaptation of hand
movements in reply to distortion of a prism glass. No reward was
shown for the test group over the placebo in this obedience. Secondary
outcomes were evaluated as well, including object meeting place scores,
which showed some improvement in the test population. Other measures,
such as attention fluctuation and motor-visual integration showed no
improvement.




The authors conclude that zocor has no effect on the improvement
of cognitive problems developed in victims of von Recklinghausen's disease type 1.
"The negative upshot of this trial suggests that simvastatin should
not
be prescribed to ameliorate the cognitive deficits associated with NF1.
Further studies to evaluate a longer treatment period and whether the
object assembly finding is spurious whitethorn be warranted," they conclude.



Effect of Simvastatin on Cognitive Functioning in Children
With Neurofibromatosis Type 1: A Randomized Controlled Trial



Lianne C. Krab; Arja de Goede-Bolder; Femke K. Aarsen; Saskia M. F.
Pluijm; Marlies J. Bouman; Jos N. van der Geest; Maarten Lequin;
Coriene E. Catsman; Willem Frans M. Arts; Steven A. Kushner; Alcino J.
Silva; Chris I. de Zeeuw; Henri�tte A. Moll; Ype Elgersma

JAMA. 2008;300(3):287-294.


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Written by Anna Sophia McKenney



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