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If you’re in the mood to  enjoy some pineapple  and want to  purchase it whole and slice it yourself , there are a few things to keep in mind when choosing a pineapple. The most important thing is to select one that’s ripe: Once a pineapple has been picked, it will no longer ripen, so it’s important to choose one that’s been plucked at its peak.   Below, a few of our suggestions for selecting a ripe pineapple. 1) For the most part, disregard color. The color of a pineapple’s shell doesn’t tell you much about ripeness. Not all ripe pineapples are yellow—a green pineapple can be ripe, too. Look for a bit of yellow, which should be present at the eyes at the base of the fruit, but a green tint elsewhere is not a bad thing. The leaves should be a vibrant shade of green. 2) Instead, give it a squeeze… The body of a pineapple should never be soft (that’s a bad sign). Rather, it should be firm, although it should yield slightly to a squeeze.   3...

Men wear masks to protect themselves from H1N1 in Yangon, Myanmar, July 24, 2017. (Photo by Reuters) Myanmar has called for calm after 13 people were confirmed to have contracted H1N1 influenza and a boy had died with flu-like symptoms, raising fears of a new outbreak of a virus also known as swine flu. Three cases of H1N1 had been confirmed in Myanmar's largest city, Yangon, on Friday, the Ministry of Health and Sport said in a statement on Monday after news of the infections had already spread. The ministry said another 10 people in Matupi - in the remote northwestern state of Chin that borders India - had caught the virus this month. A 6-year-old boy also died in Matupi with severe respiratory problems suspected to have been caused by H1N1, Win Lwin, the director of the Yangon regional health department, told reporters. "There is no need to panic because it usually happens every year," the ministry said, adding that those with symptoms should go to government cli...

Word on the street is the coconut oil is bad for you. Once  thought to be a “fat burning fat”  that was good to incorporate into your diet, now the advice is “You can put it on your body, but don’t put it in your body.” Turns out,  the research behind the oil being good for you  was a bit flawed. It was looking at all the good stuff in “designer oil,” which isn’t what most of us are picking up at Trader Joe’s. If you have a bunch of coconut oil in your pantry, you don’t have to throw it out. While you should at least limit the amount you consume (as you should with all fats, really), there are a ton of great uses, some of which we’ve written about before, for the oil that are worth giving a try: ADVERTISEMENT Condition Your Hair You may not want to line your stomach with fat, but fat can be a good thing for your hair. Coconut oil is thought to be a great conditioner. Putting it on your locks can help smooth down overlapping layers of protein, and will repel wat...

An Indian airline has given its youngest customer the ultimate birthday present. Jet Airways on Sunday said it awarded a free lifetime travel pass to a baby boy born during a flight from Dammam, Saudi Arabia, to Kochi in southwest India. The boy is the first baby to be born in-flight for Jet Airways, a spokesperson confirmed by email. Pilots diverted flight 9W 569 to Mumbai on Sunday after a passenger went into premature labor during what would've been a five-hour flight. The airline's crew members, along with a trained paramedic who was traveling that day, provided immediate medical assistance. "The guest delivered a baby boy at 35,000 feet," the spokesperson said. "Upon landing, both mother and the baby were rushed to Holy Spirit Hospital in Mumbai and are doing well." Jet Airways later informed the woman's family, who were en route from Kochi (also known as Cochin) by late Sunday. The Boeing 737 carried 162 guests and six crew members during the ...

WHY IT MATTERS TO YOU Lab-grown meat could bring an end to unnecessary animal deaths. A new research paper just brought that dream one step closer. A new study published in the  journal  Scientific Reports  has taken us one step closer to the dream of animal-free meat. (And, no, in case your mind immediately goes to the 1973 sci-fi movie  Soylent Green , it ain’t people, either!) “What the paper describes is research designed to generate muscle from a newly established pig stem-cell line, rather that from primary cells taken directly from a pig,” co-author Dr. Nicholas Genovese, a stem-cell biologist (and vegetarian), told Digital Trends. “This entailed understanding the biology of relatively uncharacterized and recently-derived porcine induced pluripotent stem cell lines. What conditions support cell growth, survival and differentiation? These are all questions I had to figure out in the lab before the cells could be turned into muscle.” As you can imagine, thi...

A new study has shown that taking vitamin D supplements, especially in small doses during fall and winter, will help prevent catching colds, influenza and other respiratory diseases. The study titled,   Vitamin D supplementation to prevent acute respiratory tract infections: Systematic review and meta-analysis of individual participant data ,  analyzed the data from 25 clinical trials in 14 countries and on 11,321 participants, aged 0 to 95 years. “The bottom line is that the protective effects of vitamin D supplementation are strongest in those who have the lowest vitamin D levels, and when supplementation is given daily or weekly rather than in more widely-spaced doses,” lead researcher, Adrian Martineau, said in a statement. Boosting immunity The research team at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) concluded that vitamin D protects the human body against respiratory infections, including bronchitis and pneumonia, by boosting levels of antibiotic-like peptides in the ...

A real-life nightmare. It sounds like something straight out of a horror movie: A woman goes in for surgery, only to wake up — paralyzed and unable to move — right before the doctor makes his first incision. But this is exactly what happened to Donna Penner when she went in for an exploratory laparoscopy in 2008, and she's decided to share her story in order to raise awareness of this horrifying possibility for others. As she writes in an essay for  BBC , Penner had been experiencing unusually heavy periods at the age of 44, and went in for the surgery in order to make sure everything was OK. As she explains, the surgery required three to four small incisions in the abdomen, which the surgeon would then push instruments through in order to "look around." While the operation started off fine, it wasn't long before things took an absolutely terrifying turn. After getting getting prepped for the surgery, an anesthesiologist gave her an intravenous drip then told her ...

Participants rode stationary bikes while wearing a wireless heart rate monitor and an EEG cap. Credit: Image courtesy of University of California - Santa Barbara It's universally accepted that the benefits of exercise go well beyond fitness, from reducing the risk of disease to improving sleep and enhancing mood. Physical activity gives cognitive function a boost as well as fortifying memory and safeguarding thinking skills. But can it enhance your vision? It appears so. Intrigued by recent findings that neuron firing rates in the regions of mouse and fly brains associated with visual processing increase during physical activity, UC Santa Barbara psychologists Barry Giesbrecht and Tom Bullock wanted to know if the same might be true for the human brain. To find out, they designed an experiment using behavioral measures and neuroimaging techniques to explore the ways in which brief bouts of physical exercise impact human performance and underlying neural activity. The research...

The Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, on Monday canvassed patronage for Nigerian doctors, declaring their services better than their counterparts abroad. Adewole said this during the commissioning of the Maternity and Neonatal Wards and Central Pharmacy Building at the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital Complex (OAUTHC), Ile-Ife in Osun. The minister commended the hospital management for the effective services rendered for the masses, charging them to publicise the hospital services for more patronage. He dismissed speculations that the hospital’s services were limited and that it had no effective medical equipment. He reiterated the plan of the Federal Government to provide standard healthcare for people across the nation. He emphasised that the Rapid Response Initiative (RRI) of the Federal Ministry of Health would continue to provide quick assistance especially to the less privileged. “The RRI will continue for the citizenries to benefit the more. “...

  The AIDS Health Care Foundation (AHF), an NGO, says it will distribute 1.5 million condoms in Nigeria as part of activities to commemorate the 2017 World Condom Day. The Country Director of AHF, Adetayo Towolawi, made this known during the commemoration of 2017 World Condom Day on Monday in Abuja. He said that the distribution of the condoms, with other activities lined up for this year’s occasion, would help increase awareness on the use of condom and its role in preventing HIV and AIDS. The director said that condom played an important role in the prevention of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections. Mr. Towolawi said the day coincided with a prelude to the Valentine’s Day, noting that where people shares time with their love, HIV also found time to spread within the period. “In order to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS while expressing sexuality, we need you to take care of your sexual and reproductive health by using condom correctly,’...

Which makes you cringe more, the threat of ransomware or the current mess of health records? Blockchain, the same technology that enables hackers to collect ransoms with anonymity, is increasingly seen as the best platform to advance universal electronic health records (EHRs),  according to Wired . Sign In  to claim 500$ worth of Bitcoin Blockchain, or distributed ledger technology, is widely associated with cryptocurrency such as bitcoin. The blockchain is also used on the “dark web” for the anonymous sale of weapons, drugs, and other illegal exchanges. The same attributes of blockchain technology that make it appealing for criminal use, however, can also help solve the complex data record-keeping needs of systems used for legitimate purposes like EHRs. More:   Blockchain technology may help secure the nuclear weapons of the future The lack of coordinated and complete electronic health records affects patients, healthcare professionals, a...