News Articles

University of Minnesota Medical School researcher Iris Borowsky, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues found that one in seven adolescents believe that it is highly likely that they will die before age 35, and this belief corresponded to more adolescents engaging in risky behaviors.Borowsky and colleagues analyzed data collected by the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a nationally representative sample of more than 20,000 youth in grades 7 through 12 during three separate study years. In the first set of interviews, nearly 15 percent of adolescents predicted they had a 50/50 chance or less of living to age 35.

Dolphins, whales and porpoises are perfectly adapted for maximum aquatic agility.  We know why that is - biologists expect that as a result of evolution - but to-date no one in physics had ever successfully analyzed how the animals' flippers interact with water; the hydrodynamic lift that they generate, the drag that they experience and their hydrodynamic efficiency.Laurens Howle and Paul Weber from Duke University teamed up with Mark Murray from the United States Naval Academy and Frank Fish from West Chester University to find out more about the hydrodynamics of whale and dolphin flippers.   Their findings; some dolphins' fins generate lift in the same way as delta wing aircraft.

Research from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Canada says that 4 percent of worldwide deaths are directly attributable to alcohol consumption and the rise is mainly due to increases in the number of women and Europeans drinking.

Sudden Cardiac Death (SCD) is an unexpected death caused by a sudden loss of heart function (sudden cardiac arrest, SCA). Every year, 400,000 adults die of SCD, making it one of the largest causes of death in Europe. Sudden Cardiac Death begins with Sudden Cardiac Arrest, mostly caused by an arrhythmia called “ventricular fibrillation” (a rapid, chaotic, lethal rhythm of the heart). When this occurs, the heart will abruptly stop to pump blood. Consequently, the patient feels dizzy and faints. SCD occurs within minutes, if no resuscitation is immediately initiated.

A team of scientists led by chemist and Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) Pioneer laureate Piet Gros and medical microbiologist Jos van Strijp from Utrecht University have succeeded in 'freezing' a chain reaction of the immune system and they're calling it a breakthrough in the field of immunology.One of the oldest defense mechanisms of our body is the complement system. Unlike white blood cells, which must learn to recognize pathogens, the complement system works from birth onwards. The system consists of proteins that initiate a chain reaction to kill bacteria and damaged cells. However the system is not perfect; it can run wild and attack our own healthy cells.

Archaeologists have used stone tools to answer many questions about human ancestors in both the distant and near past and now they are analyzing the origin of obsidian flakes to better understand how people settled and interacted in the inhospitable Kuril Islands.Using X-ray fluorescence spectrometers, archaeologists from the University of Washington and the Smithsonian Institution have found the origin of 131 flakes of obsidian, a volcanic glass. These small flakes were discarded after stone tools were made from obsidian and were found at 18 sites on eight islands in the Kurils. The flakes were found with other artifacts that were dated over a time period spanning about 1,750 years, from 2500 to 750 years before the present.

Yesterday, the Brazilian national team overcame a 2 goal deficit to defeat the USA squad 3-2 in the final of the Confederations Cup.   The unheralded USA team was a surprise but  teams always are until they achieve big wins over a period of time.    Then it becomes predictable and expected, like Brazil.But what makes a great footballer?   Being in excellent physical condition undoubtedly helps but few people actually believe that intense physical training alone can turn an average player into Cristiano Ronaldo - who is Portuguese.   Instead, there is something else that must be added.   Scientists from the University of Queensland have decided to study what this "something else" might be.  

Modern glaciers, such as those making up the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, are capable of undergoing periods of rapid change, according to new findings by paleoclimatologists at the University at Buffalo.  Their Nature Geoscience describes fieldwork to show that a prehistoric glacier in the Canadian Arctic rapidly retreated in just a few hundred years. The proof of such rapid retreat of ice sheets provides one of few confirmations that this phenomenon occurs.   Should the same conditions recur today, they would result in sharply rising global sea levels, which would threaten coastal populations. 

Worried about your child’s exposure to phthalates, the chemical compounds used as plasticizers in a wide variety of personal care products, children’s toys, and medical devices?   Phthalate exposure can begin in the womb and has been associated with negative changes in endocrine function.A new study in The Journal of Pediatrics examines the possibility that in utero phthalate exposure contributes to low birth weight in infants. Low birth weight is the leading cause of death in children under 5 years of age and increases the risk of cardiovascular and metabolic disease in adulthood. 

An enormous plume of water spurts in giant jets from the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus and a report published in Nature provides evidence that this magnificent plume is fed by a salty ocean. The Cassini spacecraft made a surprising discovery about Saturn's sixth largest moon, Enceladus, on its exploration of the giant ringed planet in 2005. Enceladus ejects water vapor, gas and tiny grains of ice into space hundreds of kilometres above the moon's surface.

High cholesterol levels are considered to be a risk factor not only for cardiovascular disease including stroke, but also for the development of Alzheimer's disease so cholesterol lowering drugs, including statins, developed in recent years may help with both. In addition to the cholesterol reducing effect of statins Amalia Dolga, PhD, of the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, and her co-investigators have demonstrated that statins can protect nerve cells against damage which we know to occur in the brain of Alzheimer's disease patients.The results are published in the June issue of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.

Rearrangements in genomes, genes and exons can result from a glitch in DNA copying that occurs when the process stalls at a critical point and then shifts to a different genetic template, duplicating and even triplicating genes or just shuffling or deleting part of the code within them, said researchers from Baylor College of Medicine in a recent report in Nature Genetics. The report further elucidated the effect of the fork stalling and template switching mechanism involved in some forms of copy number variation.