Maniolas

©Artem & Olga Sapegin/Shutterstock.com (Miami-AFP) – Drinking four or more cups of caffeinated coffee daily may significantly reduce the chance that colon cancer will return in patients who were diagnosed with stage III of the disease, a study said Monday. The study involved about 1,000 patients, all of whom had undergone surgery and chemotherapy for stage III colon cancer. Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Center in Boston found that the greatest benefit was seen in those who drank four or more cups of coffee a day, for about 460 milligrams of caffeine. “These patients were 42 percent less likely to have their cancer return than non-coffee drinkers, and were 33 percent less likely to die from cancer or any other cause,” said the study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Those who drank two to three cups of coffee daily experienced a “more modest benefit, while little protection was associated with one cup or less.” The researchers found the lowered risks of recurrence and death were specifically tied to the caffeine in coffee rather than other coffee components. Stage III disease means that the colon cancer has been found in the lymph nodes near the original tumor site, but not elsewhere in the body. Lead author Charles Fuchs, director of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Center at Dana-Farber, said these patients have about a 35 percent chance of the cancer coming back after treatment. Most recurrences happen within five years of treatment. “We found that coffee drinkers had a lower risk of the Read More …

For the first time in something like 20 years, I’m teaching two undergraduate classes this semester. I usually teach one graduate and one undergrad class, but thanks to what I’m taking as a glitch in the registration process, my graduate fiction writing class — which is usually oversubscribed — had zero enrollees this term, forcing its cancellation and my reassignment to a course usually reserved for young instructors, English 11 or “Literature and Society.” I should make it clear that I’ve always insisted on teaching at least one undergrad class every semester, and have done so unfailingly since I returned from my own graduate studies abroad in 1991. The benefits go both ways — young students get to learn from more experienced professors, and senior profs get to know how young people think. With four years of active teaching left before retirement (it’s hard to believe, but I’m getting there), these encounters with some of the country’s brightest young minds will only become more precious, and as with every class I take on, I can only hope that, many years from now, my former students will remember something useful that they picked up from me. I haven’t taught English 11 in ages, so it was with some trepidation that I entered the classroom on our first day a couple of weeks ago, under UP’s new academic calendar. Students don’t realize this, but professors can be just as full of anxiety at the start of the semester as they are. As Read More …

The varied characters played by Wally on Eat, Bulaga!, from a self-made duktora to an over-protective grandmother to a flirtatious English-speaking girl named Duhrizz who has a crush on Alden Richards (shown below with Wally as Lola Nidora and her nanny Yaya Dub)— PHOTOS FROM THE EAT, BULAGA! FACEBOOK AlDub Nation was relieved…rejoicing! The highly-touted YaKie wedding of the reluctant Divina Ursula Bokbokova Smash (a.k.a. Yaya Dub) and Frankie Amoy Arenoli (played by Jose Manalo) was aborted because the pastor was exposed to be an impostor and the doctor was a charlatan as well, promised money by Lola Nidora to diagnose her as a terminal case so she could extort P51,500M from Frankie.  Alden Richards was relieved, too. He wiped his tears (“They were real!” assured Joey de Leon, one of the Eat, Bulaga! hosts) and swapped flying kisses with Yaya Dub. Expect the AlDub long-distance/split-screen romance to continue until it hits happily-ever-after. Off-screen, the one laughing the hardest could be Wally Bayola whose career has gotten an unexpected second wind with his evolving character (starting with a doctor who dished out tips from a self-made medical booklet) in the Problem-Solving portion of the noontime show’s peripatetic segment Juan For All, All For Juan. Isn’t Wally confused playing those multiplied all-female characters? Entertainment ( Article MRec ), pagematch: 1, sectionmatch: 1 “Sometimes I do,” Wally told Funfare, “especially sa boses. They would remind me, ‘Hoy, hindi ka si duktora, si Lola Nidora ka.’ We just laugh about it.” Added to Read More …