Intermittent fasting, and fasting in general, has been a popular fad health gimmick, but the science isn't on its side. Instead, proponents believe mice are little people so if mice weaned on starvation diets lived longer, people would also.
Cardiovascular disease affects around 46 percent of men and 48 percent of women but scholars in Florida are concerned that Apollo astronauts have died from related diseases 43 percent of the time. Why be worried, when it is lower? Because they have exceptional government health care, not the kind people under the Affordable Care Act get, and that means in a spacefaring environment, there could be unforeseen issues.
It is well-documented that age is the biggest risk factor for all diseases, and cardiovascular disease is the big killer of Americans. The Apollo program began 50 years ago so it is no surprise elderly astronauts have heart issues.
Electronic cigarettes have grown in popularity as an alternative to traditional cigarette smoking - the idea is that since they are just nicotine vapor, users will not be placed in peril by the 200 toxic chemicals in cigarette smoke.
Still, they are controversial. The government does not allow them to be marketed for smoking cessation because no company is large enough to survive regulatory approval - except tobacco or pharmaceutical companies, which many e-cigarette users regard as the problem.
A University of Colorado Cancer Center study compared outcomes of leukemia patients receiving bone marrow transplants from 2009-2014, finding that three years post transplant, the incidence of severe chronic graft-versus-host disease was 44 percent in patients who had received transplants from matched, unrelated donors (MUD) and 8 percent in patients who had received umbilical cord blood transplants (CBT). Patients who received CBT were also more likely to no longer need immunosuppression and less likely to experience late infections and hospitalizations. There was no difference in overall survival between these two techniques. Results are published in the journal Bone Marrow Transplant.
Perovskite solar cells are the rising star in the photovoltaic landscape. Since their invention, less than ten years ago, their efficiency has doubled twice and it is now over 22% - an astonishing result in the renewable energy sector. Taking the name 'perovskite' from the light-harvesting layer that characterizes them, these solar cells are lighter, cheaper, and more flexible than the traditional crystalline silicon-based cells.
Researchers at The University of Queensland have contributed to the discovery of three new genes which increase the risk of motor neuron disease (MND), opening the door for targeted treatments.
Professor Naomi Wray from UQ's Queensland Brain Institute was involved in the data analysis as a part of an international study of more than 30,000 people.
"These three new genes open new opportunities for research to understand a complex and debilitating disease which currently has no effective treatments," Professor Wray said.
"Crucially, we hope Australian patients will be included in the next phase of the study, thanks to funds raised by the Ice Bucket Challenge."
Light from a distant galaxy can be strongly bent by the gravitational influence of a foreground galaxy. That effect is called strong gravitational lensing. Normally a single galaxy is lensed at a time. The same foreground galaxy can - in theory - simultaneously lens multiple background galaxies. Although extremely rare, such a lens system offers a unique opportunity to probe the fundamental physics of galaxies and add to our understanding of cosmology. One such lens system has recently been discovered and the discovery was made not in an astronomer's office, but in a classroom. It has been dubbed the Eye of Horus (Fig. 1), and this ancient eye in the sky will help us understand the history of the universe.
Classroom Research Pays Off
Baby boomers, adults born between 1945 and 1965, are five times more likely to have been exposed to the hepatitis C virus (HCV).
As a result, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Preventive Service Task Force recommend that all patients in that age group get tested.
But the simple blood test, designed to detect and prevent illness before the virus wreaks havoc, is infrequently performed on baby boomers whose routine medical appointments are often crammed with other preventive measures and tests -- as well as time spent addressing active problems that require a doctor's immediate attention.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - What's good for crops is not always good for the environment. Nitrogen, a key nutrient for plants, can cause problems when it leaches into water supplies. University of Illinois engineers developed a model to calculate the age of nitrogen in corn and soybean fields, which could lead to improved fertilizer application techniques to promote crop growth while reducing leaching.
Civil and environmental engineering professor Praveen Kumar and graduate student Dong Kook Woo published their work in the journal Water Resources Research.
Retailers are openly flouting the ban on tobacco sales near schools in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province in South-Central China, reveals research published online in the journal Tobacco Control.
Furthermore, marketing strategies targeting children are "pervasive," the study shows, prompting the authors to urge officials to take swift action to enforce the regulations.
Tobacco retail sales are prohibited within 100 metres of schools in many large cities in China, but it's not clear how well this zoning regulation is being enforced.
The NFL's schedule makers face a lot of uncertainty when they sit down every spring to put together the next season's Monday Night Football schedule. They want viewers and they want to give teams national exposure.
Yet the games won't be played for several months, and all sorts of things can happen that make a game which seems compelling in April a viewership bust in October: Players might be traded, injured or leave in free agency, and there is often a great deal of parity so a playoff team from one season may take a nosedive the next. A Monday Night Football schedule that once appeared to be filled with ratings winners is riddled with games few fans are interested in watching.
The legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado was associated with both increased hospital visits and cases at a regional poison center because of unintentional exposure to the drug by children, suggesting effective preventive measures are needed as more states consider legalizing the drug, according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics.
More than half of U.S. states allowed medical marijuana and four states allowed recreational marijuana use as of 2015. Colorado is one of those states, having allowed medical marijuana in 2000 and recreational marijuana becoming available for purchase in 2014.
Does a long travel time to a primary stroke center (PSC) offset the potential benefits of this specialized care?
In an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine, Kimon Bekelis, M.D., of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, N.H., and coauthors analyzed data for a national group of Medicare beneficiaries and calculated travel time to evaluate the association of seven-day and 30-day death rates with receiving care in a PSC.
Stroke is a leading cause of death and long-term disability in the United States. To maximize patient outcomes, referral centers - PSCs certified by The Joint Commission are the backbone of this - have been established to ensure adherence to guidelines and the efficient delivery of disease-specific care.
