The female strength on display in Rio is worth getting excited about | Van Badham

It’s not only Leslie Jones who’s having an emotional Olympics experience. While the Ghostbusters star has achieved a happy notoriety for her pro-Games enthusiasm – and fellow actor Samuel L. Jackson impressed for something best described as tweet-length joyous fury – the intensity of peak international sporting competition seems to provoke in the famous and unknown, supporters and detractors, a collective psychological thrall both of some mass and diversity.

— Samuel L. Jackson (@SamuelLJackson) August 8, 2016

Most MUTHAFUKKA OF A LEG by AquamanPhelps!!! Hella swim by All!! Go USA!!!!

The tender instrument of social media has exposed to me those spectators who tremor with an unexpected patriotism in moments of national victory. And that others are moved to Scrooge-sized humbug of the expense, the scale, the spectacle, the sponsorships. And yet others whose habitual stoicism crumbles amid the sporting narratives of personal triumph and disappointment.

Related: Rio Olympics: Phelps v Lochte in the 200m individual medley – live!

I write this as one among many surprised at the depth – and the type – of my own emotional reaction to the Games, for they’ve inspired in me a sudden, confusing contradiction in my feminist politics. Watching female athletes sweat and jostle, leap, thrust, charge and tear in sporting competition, I am, for the first tangible time in my adult life, consumed with female body envy.

I am short, bespectacled and – otherwise happily – a little plump. As a teenager I was never quite sincere in any expressed admiration for the willowy models, actors and popstars that contemporary pop culture encouraged me to ape.

It always struck me as odd – when it was, more than once, suggested to my face in change rooms – that to remedy a dress that didn’t stretch over my breasts I should cut myself to fit the garment rather than, you know, alter the material.

When the late-teenage realisation dawned that a little plumpness was no disincentive at all to the attentions of young gentlemen, I dispensed self doubt entirely, and helped myself to many pies.

Egypt’s Doaa Elghobashy controls the ball in front of Canada’s Kristina Valjas during a women’s beach volleyball qualifying match. Photograph: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images

But I gaze at today’s Olympian women, like the extraordinary Simone Bines, and I suddenly regret almost all my physical choices in life, longing to have worked out, toughened up, added muscle. Perhaps it is a combination of Bines, as well as the inclusion of women’s rugby this Olympiad, the harder competition demanded of those working to break records on the track or in the pool, the exposure given the brutality of women’s cycling, the singular physical adeptness of Caster Semanya or the refreshing recontextualisation given beach volleyball by the Egyptian women who took proudly to the sand to play their game well covered up, but this year like no other have I been attuned to the Olympics as a showcase of growing pride in female bodily strength.

It could just be me; I’m hitting my 40s, one of my knees is a little wobbly, and the demands of mid-life domestic duty has left me more than disappointed that I’m strained and out of breath. But it could be a silent zeitgeist of feminist realisation that one of the final great taboos restricting the agency of women – the social policing of femininity – is finally, finally starting to wither.

In the west, we inherit terrible, powerful messages that disassociate what it means to a woman from what it means to be physically strong. The New Testament’s insistence that women should be desired for being “weaker vessels” obliging men to dominate and steer them is an example of what’s created if we perform gender as one of only two cultural options, defined in opposition. As Australian gender theorist Jamila Rosdahl puts it: “that men should be strong, aggressive and in control and women should be weak, passive and powerless.”

It’s why the Victorians found erotic appeal in the corset for fetishising womanly “physical weakness and vulnerability … juxtaposed with man’s strength.” It’s why in the second world war, the American military purposely excluded “masculine” women from service in the belief that physically strong women performing in traditionally male roles would “produce lesbians” and destabilise the social order. Ooh, imagine.

Serena Williams of the United States in action against Elina Svitolina of Ukraine during a women’s singles third round match. Photograph: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images

Related: Mack Horton has set something in motion. Is this the line in the sand on doping in sport? | Caroline Riot

And it’s informed an outspoken sexism that persists in sport: like in 1999, when Martina Hingis described a teenage Amelie Mauresmo as “half a man”, or in 2012 when Dominika Cibulkova said playing Sam Stosur was “like playing a man”, or 2014, when a Russian tennis official referred to Serena and Venus as “the Williams brothers”. And that’s just in the sport of tennis where, by the way, Tomasz Wiktorowski, the coach of Agnieszka Radwanska, boasted – in 2015! – of a decision to keep his player “as the smallest player in the top 10.” Why? “Because, first of all she’s a woman, and she wants to be a woman.”

But maybe it’s the sport of tennis that’s also helped to de-lace the cultural corset of the old gender binary, because when I think of the woman I want to be, it’s Serena Williams’s example to which I aspire, not Agnieszka Radwanka’s.

Because while Williams may be leaving Rio after a shock upset to the Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina, the cultural victory is already hers. As one of the most decorated athletes, of either gender, in any sport, of all time, her example is proudly one amid the many women of this Olympic generation unafraid to define what it means to be a woman, free from the old traditions that oblige weakness – and entirely on her own terms. And that, more than any race, heat, triumph, loss or medal in this Olympics, is worth being excited about.

The female strength on display in Rio is worth getting excited about | Van Badham

Are three-D Mammograms a Greater Way to Display for Breast Cancer?

A huge new examine compares digital mammography, what’s been state-of-the-artwork in clinical practice for close to 15 many years, with addition of a newer technique called tomosynthesis. Like other kinds of mammography, tomosynthesis uses x-rays to produce breast photographs. But it does so in three-D, virtually like a mini-CT scan of the breast.

That sounds wonderful, and having go through the paper in JAMA, I’m convinced that tomosynthesis is much more correct than standard or even digital mammography in detecting small, invasive breast tumors. And there is no doubt in my thoughts that screening mammography saves women’s lives (such as mine, so far), when it is carried out appropriately by nicely-educated doctors making use of modern tools.

The JAMA study was funded by Hologic, the products supply for tomosynthesis. Some one,a hundred radiology centers in the U.S. now have this type of breast imaging system, which cost in excess of $ 400,000 per machine. Numerous insurers, and Medicare, really do not cover the added fees of three-D imaging – typically less than $ a hundred more per screening than other mammograms. So the brief-term further expenses per screen are low, but the gear overhaul, and instruction for widespread tomosynthesis use, represents a big expenditure.

The query about tomosynthesis is 1st, whether or not it’s really worth investing in so several new machines, and in educating radiologists how to interpret three-D breast images. 2nd, I’m concerned about the risk of additional radiation, which is approximately double that of the reduced-dose exposure per scan by digital mammography.

The third question, for some, would be added cost. This is not really a query for me. Because if tomosynthesis is indeed a lot greater, it would be well worth paying an extra hundred or a thousand dollar per yr, per lady for screening. Amongst middle-aged women, among the ages of 40 and 60, indolent or slow-increasing breast tumors are uncommon. The fact is, if you disregard invasive breast cancers, with out removing them, they have a tendency to get larger and spread. Bigger tumors call for far more surgical treatment, greater operations that are significantly less very likely to be curative. If the tumor has spread so that it’s metastatic, or if it recurs, ladies are consigned to life-prolonged, more pricey remedy until death.

These considerations have led me to help recommendations that all middle-aged women who are not most likely to die within a couple of years of one more condition be screened for breast cancer if they decide on to be screened. Elsewhere I have advised that it may be enough to display girls every single other 12 months, starting at age 40 via age 65 or so, dependent on a woman’s total well being and preferences. This kind of a approach, of screening every other yr, would have the economic costs of the method, and would halve every single woman’s radiation publicity.

So what do I feel a . The JAMA paper appears at more than 450,000 screenings among March, 2010 and October, 2011 at 13 radiology centers, some academic and other people not, where tomosynthesis was launched. This is a present day study restricted by its comparative (non-randomized) style. The mean age of girls screened was 56 or 57 years.

Tomosynthesis gear (supply: US FDA site)

The get-home findings from are that, general, tomosynthesis picked up a lot more invasive cancers than did two-D digital mammography alone, and it did so with a lower charge of “call-backs” – what in most cases flip out to be false positives. All round, incorporating tomosynthesis to digital mammography lowered the recall fee from 107 to 91 per 1000 girls screened. That’s a substantial drop. Regardless of fewer call-backs, the medical professionals who used tomosynthesis have been much more most likely to locate cancer: with additional tomosynthesis, medical doctors discovered 4.one invasive tumors per 1000 ladies screened, vs. 2.9 employing digital mammography alone.

Yet another key level is that the benefits varied. In two of the services in the JAMA study, where volume of tomosynthesis studies, and presumably doctors’ experience with these, was smaller sized, 3-D imaging was much less valuable. This obtaining harkens to prior observations that radiologists’ encounter issues in breast cancer screening outcomes.

An accompanying editorial in JAMA calls on the NIH to fund a “much-necessary trial to address many of the remaining problems about breast cancer screening.” Although in principle I’d like to see a prospective, randomized research of the lengthy-phrase outcomes of breast cancer screening, the fact is by the time we’re far out sufficient to see a clear benefit of that potential evaluation, in terms of total mortality right after, say, 15 or twenty many years – when the benefit of screening pans out in terms of survival – the engineering will have enhanced so that digital mammography, and possibly tomosynthesis, would be obsolete.

So I don’t think it is well worth the fees of extended-phrase randomized studies of mammography, by any strategy. Rather,  who pick to be screened, each year or each other 12 months, and towards continued healthcare education of radiologists who interpret photographs obtained strictly, with present day, meticulously-calibrated tools of both kind.

Are three-D Mammograms a Greater Way to Display for Breast Cancer?

Kid cancer sufferers display "real face" of ailment on the web following "no make- up selfie" campaign

Eleanor Massey, 30, was one particular of the parents who came up with the notion for the page. Her son Jacob, 3, was taken care of on Ward 84 following currently being diagnosed with leukaemia in December 2013 and is now in remission.

Ms Massey, who lives with her spouse Spencer Bannister in Gorton, Manchester, and other two youngsters, Lucy, two and Mary, eight months, said: “We’ve always had a Facebook group for individuals whose children are becoming handled on Ward 84 and a whole lot of folks had been offended by the ‘no make-up selfie’ factor.

“They were concerned people had been just posting pictures but not knowing they also had to make a donation to cancer charities.

“We wanted to display the genuine face of cancer and have also asked men and women to describe their child’s signs and symptoms as tons of mother and father want to know what to appear out for.

“We hope by letting people into our globe a bit we can raise awareness of childhood cancers and raise income for charities who have aided us.”

A get together is currently being held following month for patients, former individuals and their households.

A lot more details can be found at facebook.com/Facesofward84 or to donate text RMCH14 and the quantity you wish to donate to 70070.

Kid cancer sufferers display "real face" of ailment on the web following "no make- up selfie" campaign

Shock figures display extent of self-harm in English teenagers | Lorenza Bacino

There has been a threefold improve in the quantity of youngsters who self-harm in England in the last decade, in accordance to a Planet Overall health Organisation collaborative review.

The Wellness Behaviour in College-Aged Young children (HBSC) report, due to be published in the autumn, will reveal that of the 6,000 younger individuals aged eleven, 13 and 15 surveyed across England – up to a single in 515-yr-olds say they self-harm.  

There is no comparative data from other nations as England is the 1st nation to request this query on self-harm since the global review, which is conducted each and every four many years, began in 1983. The selection to include it follows a rise in anecdotal evidence from teachers in secondary schools across the nation. 

The last thorough examine of self-harm in England was published by the British Medical Journal in 2002. It surveyed close to 6,000 15- and 16-yr-olds in 41 schools and located that 6.9% of them said they had self-harmed above the past 12 months. This compares with the 2013-14 WHO study, which puts the figure at 20% of 15-yr-olds.

Self-harm contains actions such as cutting, burning and biting oneself. Professor Fiona Brooks, head of adolescent and child well being at the University of Hertfordshire, is the global study’s principal investigator for England. She says: “Our findings are genuinely worrying, and it is [self-harm] significantly worse among girls. At age eleven, each girls and boys report a very good level of emotional wellbeing. But by the age of 15, the gap has widened and we get 45% of adolescent women saying they feel minimal when a week in contrast with 23% of boys.” 

She warns of a ticking timebomb unless the rise in bad psychological well being between younger people is addressed. “We do not yet know ample about why this [bad psychological wellness] is but mother and father are busy and stressed, and children’s lives are turning out to be a lot more pressurised. They know they need to have much better grades to get to university, but there’s no assure of a task at the end of it all.”

Brooks believes that young individuals are “turning to techniques this kind of as self-harm to control tension in the short term”.

“Even though there has been a decline in classic danger behaviours like smoking and drug and alcohol abuse, there hasn’t been a transition to much more good wellness behaviours,” she says.

Grace, sixteen, appears to be a bubbly and confident teenager who loves music, singing and netball. She is studying for her GCSEs. Nonetheless, when she was twelve, Grace began self-harming.

“I began cutting my wrists using scissors and razor blades, which I disinfected myself,” she says. “As time went on and I acquired worse, it progressed all the way up my left arm and my upper thighs. I just bandaged it up and left it.”

Many years of cutting have left her with deep scars that she covers up when close to individuals she does not know very effectively. “At my worst, I was hurting myself after a week or even a lot more. Occasionally it was after a month. It just depended what was going on all around me,” she explains. “It calmed me down but then I’d right away want I hadn’t completed it as it hurts and you need to hide it.”

Regardless of celebrities, including actor Angelina Jolie and singers Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato, going public that they have self-harmed, and a variety of professional-self-harm web sites placing the behaviour on younger people’s radar, Grace says she wasn’t conscious of anybody else performing it. She never ever confided in her mum, but last but not least a teacher noticed.

“I was hauled into the headteacher’s office a single morning, and my mum and my teacher and the head have been all sitting there. I was entirely bowled more than when they said they knew what I’d been undertaking, ” she recalls. As a result of the meeting, Grace retreated more into her globe, self-harmed more and concealed it far better. “Even when I needed to cease, I could not – and it took me longer than I care to admit to get factors underneath handle,” she says.

The nearby youngster and adolescent mental wellness services (Camhs) in Oxfordshire mentioned it could not support Grace due to the fact she had not been formally diagnosed with any issue. She did receive counselling by way of her school, but says it did not aid since she couldn’t relate to the older counsellor.

Even though her mum says she feels she has failed her, Grace does not blame any person for what she went through. “It is no one’s fault. I just wish I’d been capable to cope with issues greater,” she says.

“When I was twelve, my mum was moving in with my now stepdad, I was not acquiring on extremely properly with anyone at college, and the few pals I did have weren’t currently being quite kind. I struggle with adjust, so from all elements it was hard. It had often been me, my mum and my sister, and it was all so new with my stepdad. My real dad worked abroad a great deal so I felt I did not have any person to talk to and I did not have any way of dealing with it.”

Of her gradual recovery, Grace says: “Possibly I just got utilised to the modifications around me and items received better at school. I have a close group of friends, and for the first time I have a best good friend which I have never had before. My family members has been really supportive as well.”

But she adds that getting diagnosed with depression a year ago was a massive relief and she believes that an earlier diagnosis would have helped. “It stopped me currently being baffled about why I felt this way,” she says. “Despite the fact that it sucked to have a label, becoming diagnosed aided me to realise that there was a purpose behind what I was performing and once I dealt with the reasons, I knew I would not have to revert back to self-harm any far more.”

Selfharm.co.united kingdom is a website set up in 1993 to support the emotional and social wants of all younger folks. It gives a forum in which self-harmers can seek guidance and truly feel linked with others going via similar experiences. Grace was asked to pilot its Alumina scheme, which offers weekly on-line meetings with counsellors and medical professionals and she participates in a variety of actions that support to analyse what she is doing.

Rachel Welch, the director of Selfharm.co.united kingdom, says catching the dilemma early makes it simpler to stop. “We know that the earlier you intervene, the less complicated it is to break this habit.”

Technology is enabling youthful people to seek help significantly much more quickly – even within a day of first self-harming, she believes. The Samaritans reports that self-harm is the major reason individuals use its text messaging support, which, it says, is proving hugely helpful to young folks.

Self-harm has only been recognised as a diagnosis across Europe because Could last yr. It is diagnosed as “non-suicidal self damage”. Professor Peter Fonagy, clinical adviser to NHS England’s Enhanced Access to Psychological Therapies programme, says: “Only a little fraction, up to 15% [of people self-harming] ever existing to clinical companies – so it genuinely is only the tip of the iceberg, as is the case with most psychological ailments, where the unmet need is very higher.” He adds that younger individuals who self-harm are much more likely to go to a trusted adult such as a teacher or a policemen or even A&ampE. “This is why it’s critical that these individuals are offered the right resources to assess the chance and take proper action,” he says. He factors to MindEd.org.united kingdom, an on the internet resource, launched by the Department of Wellness, for anybody working with youngsters and youthful people’s mental health concerns.

Dr Jacqueline Cornish, nationwide clinical director for young children and younger folks at NHS England, who is accountable for the Camhs service, says for those younger men and women who do seek assist from a wellness expert: “It is vital we have the correct companies in area when children, younger individuals or without a doubt grownups need to have them. But this have to be combined with higher public knowing of the factors why an individual may possibly self-harm and how to get assist.”

Brooks believes study is telling us a closer look is required at what has caused this kind of a dramatic improve in self-harm in the past decade. “We need to know what strategies to put in place to support youthful men and women navigate adolescence effectively.”

Grace advises any younger man or woman who is self-harming to “speak to somebody, attain out”. She welcomes celebrities, such as Lovato, who have utilized social media to raise awareness about followers who self-harm. “I never believe they glamorise it. She has dealt with numerous psychological overall health problems herself and now puts her experiences to the excellent of other people,” she says.

Of her own expertise of speaking out, Grace says: “I’ve had overwhelming support. I am in a great place and I can quite significantly say 100% I am not going to go back to it.

Shock figures display extent of self-harm in English teenagers | Lorenza Bacino

Pressure can be transmitted via Television display

1 group was given tough arithmetic queries and interviewed to induce direct anxiety.

The group of 211 observers simply watched the test and interviews via a a single-way mirror and more than video transmissions. As anticipated, 95 per cent of the individuals positioned under direct stress showed signs of stress.

However, 26 per cent of observers had an boost in cortisol, a hormone released in response to pressure.

The impact of tension was particularly higher when a topic was observing a romantic partner in a nerve-racking scenario (forty per cent) but it applied to strangers as effectively (ten per cent).

When observers watched urgent occasions by means of a one particular-way mirror, 30 per cent skilled a demanding response. An additional 24 per cent of observers felt underneath anxiety when they watched the events unfold over the video. Dr Veronika Engert, one of the study’s authors, said: “This implies that even tv programmes depicting the struggling of other individuals can transmit that pressure to viewers.

“The reality that we could measure this empathic pressure in the kind of a important hormone release was astonishing. There should be a transmission mechanism by means of which the target’s state can elicit a similar state in the observer .”

The researchers explained anxiety gets to be a issue when it is chronic.

The findings are published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.

Pressure can be transmitted via Television display

Almost a tenth of babies and toddlers in England and Wales are Muslim, census figures display

The figures display there had been 3.five million kids aged -four of whom 320,000 had been Muslim. That proportion is a lot more than 9 per cent and compares with a total Muslim population amid all age groups of much less than five per cent.

“It surely is a startling figure,” stated Professor David Coleman, Professor of Demography at the University of Oxford. “We have had substantial immigration of Muslims for a extended time. Continuing immigration from Pakistan, Bangladesh and India has been extra to by new immigration from African nations and from the Middle East.

“Birth prices of Muslims of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin remain fairly substantial, even though falling. There look to be very lower amounts of falling away from religion among Muslims.”

Christians stay the biggest religious group between individuals aged -four, at one.5 million, 43 per cent.

Dale Barton, priest in charge at St Clement’s, a Church of England parish in Bradford, mentioned: “This was a white doing work-class British region 50 many years ago. They have all gone. There are two pubs hanging on by their fingertips. There’s a Labour club. 1 club has just gone. Outlets are now Muslim-owned. I’m not decrying that. A considerable quantity open on Christmas Day.”

Ibrahim Mogra, assistant secretary-standard of the Muslim Council of Britain said that the big quantity of younger Muslim children was a vote of self-assurance in the country by Muslims. “I just wouldn’t want our fellow citizens to be alarmed by an boost in quantity,” he stated. “This generation is really significantly British. They truly feel quite significantly this is their residence. It’s not about Britain turning into a Muslim nation but about Britain enabling the practice of Islam, which provides self-assurance to the vast vast majority of Muslims. It’s a fantastic country to regard as our house.”

Philip Lewis, a scholar of Islam and writer of Youthful, British and Muslim, warned that the one-in-ten birth rate statistic could “generate alarmism”.

He emphasised the selection of the Muslim population across the country, which in London incorporated an affluent Arab elite and Europeanised Turkish Cypriots. In components of the urban north, even though, there was a “bicultural reality” of indigenous and Kashmiri operating classes. “We don’t have real diversity in a lot of of these northern mill towns or excellent swathes of Bradford,” he stated.

Almost a tenth of babies and toddlers in England and Wales are Muslim, census figures display