Black Friday

Now we are used to getting astonishing offers on the Black Friday in Spain, but it is something relatively new in our culture. As there is such a big difference in the prices, a lot of people decide to wait until Black Friday to get what they need or buy their Christmas presents in advance to be able to save money or even to be able to get more items for the same price.
Let's see where this special day comes from. Click here to see a short but well explained video:

How one country persuaded teens to give up drink and drugs

Watch here a short and really interesting video about how Iceland managedto stop this huge problem among teenagers.

Teens_bbc_video

After watching it, leave your opinion about the 5 rules mentioned in the video. Would something like this be possible in your country?

 

The Fratellis

And their song 'The Next Time We Wed'. Check now if you understood everything.

Daytime wounds heal more quickly than those suffered at night

We have here a really interesting article sent by Javier about the importance of the time of the day to heal wounds. Thanks, Javier!

You can click here to watch a short but really interesting video: Daytime_wounds

The antidote to a bad scrape-up is usually a fairly simple recipe: antibiotics, bandages, and time. Now, a new study suggests that timing also matters. Skin cells that help patch up wounds work more quickly in the daytime than they do at night, thanks to the workings of our circadian clock. The finding suggests patients might recover from injury more quickly if they have surgery during the right time of day.

Biologists and neuroscientists long thought the body’s time keeper, our circadian clock, resided only in the brain. In mammals, that place is a region of the hypothalamus called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which receives signals from the eyes. However, recent research demonstrated that cells in other parts of the body—including the lungs and liver—keep their own time. Researchers aren’t quite sure how they maintain their own 24-hour schedule, whereas other cells need external reminders.

To find out, John O’Neill, a biologist at the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, U.K., and his team studied skin cells known as fibroblasts, which are essential for wound healing. Fibroblasts invade the void left by a scratch and lay the foundation for new skin to grow. The cells are also known to keep their own time. For example, cultured cells exhibit rhythmic oscillations in gene expression where there is no input from the master clock.

Given the fibroblasts’ time-keeping abilities, O’Neill and colleagues searched for proteins within the cells that ebb and flow with daily rhythms. They came back with an unexpected result: Proteins that direct the construction of the cell’s actin-based skeleton worked daytime shifts. These cellular contractors tell fibroblasts to move into an injury to begin the healing process. So the finding suggests that the time of day a wound occurs may affect how quickly it heals. Such a “skyscraper” hypothesis seems reasonable, says Steven Brown, a chronobiologist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland who was not involved in the study. “To build a complex tissue over several days, it makes sense to import building materials in a regularly timed fashion,” he says.

The researchers then tested that hypothesis with cells grown in a flat layer in a petri dish. The fibroblasts filled in scratches more quickly during the day than at night. “You can see by eye, when the cell is wounded only 8 hours apart from each other, in a different circadian phase, the [daytime] wounded ones take off, and the [nighttime] one drags,” O’Neill says.

The researchers then showed in mice that skin wounds suffered during waking hours healed better than ones incurred during resting hours. What’s more, those increases lined up with the cell culture data. About twice as many fibroblasts migrated into the daytime wounds as nighttime ones. “We were really astonished,” O’Neill says.

Finally, O’Neill and colleagues looked for evidence of such an effect in humans. The team examined data from the International Burn Injury Database, which records, among other things, the time of day an injury occurred. The analysis revealed that nighttime burns took an average of 11 days longer to heal than burns incurred during the day, the researchers report today in Science Translational Medicine. Brown calls the findings insightful. “I find it fascinating that even though wound healing takes days, a circadian clock is still used to optimize different aspects of the process.” 

O’Neill says that the time-varying response may be an evolutionary adaptation. As people are more likely to sustain injuries when awake than when sleeping, perhaps our bodies are primed to respond more quickly in the daytime. But he emphasizes the need for further controlled clinical studies to confirm the effect. He speculates that, if real, the effect could help people recover more quickly by scheduling surgeries in time with their personal circadian rhythms, earlier for morning larks and later for night owls.

                                                                                                                      By Roni Dengler

'Mick, I owe you a beer': British surfer thanks Fanning after fending off shark

A British doctor who was attacked by a shark on the New South Wales central coast while surfing says he owes Mick Fanning a drink after copying the professional surfer’s tactics and punching the animal off.
Charlie Fry, 25, was surfing with three friends at Avoca beach on Monday afternoon when a shark hit him on the shoulder.



“I said: ‘Just do what Mick did, just punch it in the nose’,” Fry told the Nine Network on Tuesday. “If you are watching or listening, Mick, I owe you a beer, thank you very much.”
Fry said he was up to 40 metres offshore when the shark jumped out of the water and hit him on the right shoulder.
“I got this massive thud on my right-hand side, which completely blindsided me. I thought it was a friend goofing around. I turned and I saw this shark come out of the water and breach its head.
“I punched it in the face with my left hand ... and managed to scramble back on my board, shout at my friends. Luckily a wave came, so I just surfed the wave in,” he said.
“I was just surfing, [saying] get in as fast as possible, ride the wave as fast as possible, ride the wave as long as you can and start paddling for your life essentially. It was very, very hectic. Very, very hectic.”
Fry said he was not conscious of his injured and bleeding arm until he reached the shore.
“I didn’t really notice it at the time because when you’re surfing, all I’m thinking was: ‘I’m about to die. I’m literally about to die’,” Fry said.
He was taken to Gosford hospital with scratches and a puncture wound on his shoulder.
The Westpac Life Saver Rescue Helicopters said a three-metre shark, probably a bronze whaler, had been sighted in the surf zone at Avoca.
Avoca Beach and North Avoca will remain closed for Tuesday.
Australian surfing great Fanning was attacked by a great white while competing at Jeffreys Bay in South Africa in 2015 and walked away physically unscathed after fighting it off.
Fry indicated he would be taking a break from surfing for the foreseeable future.
“I probably wouldn’t go to that point for a while. It is called ‘shark tower’ for a reason, so I will probably just go somewhere else,” he said. “I mean, the surf was rubbish. It wasn’t even worth it.”
                                                                                                                   The Guardian

Watch him explaining what happened clicking here: shark_attack_the_guardian

Practise the ellipsis

Can you put this dialogue in the right order? I'm sure you can. Give it a try!

Very funny!

Biscuit?

You joking?

Please, two.

I shouldn’t. Diet starts tomorrow!

Love one.

Sugar?

Fancy a cup of tea?

No. Not at all. It always starts tomorrow!

 Come to class with the dialogue organised.