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.
New lip-reading technology developed at the University of East Anglia (UEA) could help in solving crimes and provide communication assistance for people with hearing and speech impairments.
The visual speech recognition technology, created by Dr Helen L. Bear and Prof Richard Harvey of UEA's School of Computing Sciences, can be applied "any place where the audio isn't good enough to determine what people are saying," Dr Bear said.
As organic chemistry evolved, techniques for catalyzing hydrocarbons advanced and one by one a method was created for their manipulation. Ethane, propane, butane, pentane -- all the alkanes followed a similar pattern and their reactions had predictable results. Only one alkane-methane- refused to follow suit and this confounded chemists for decades. Methane had been just too difficult to work with; its C-H bond could not be manipulated. Using a new hybrid breed of computational and experimental chemistry, an international team of chemists, led by IBS Center for Catalytic Hydrocarbon Functionalizations Associate Director Mu-Hyun Baik, was able to solve a puzzle that has been dubbed a "Holy Grail reaction" and devise a method for catalyzing reactions with methane.
Viruses that infect bacteria are among the most abundant life forms on Earth. Indeed, our oceans, soils and potentially even our bodies would be overrun with bacteria were it not for bacteria-eating viruses, called bacteriophages, that keep the microbial balance of ecological niches in check.
Now, a new study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that bacteriophages made of RNA -- a close chemical cousin of DNA -- likely play a much larger role in shaping the bacterial makeup of worldwide habitats than previously recognized.
Despite increased understanding of heart disease risk factors and the need for preventive lifestyle changes, patients suffering the most severe type of heart attack have become younger, more obese and more likely to have preventable risk factors such as smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, according to a study scheduled for presentation at the American College of Cardiology's 65th Annual Scientific Session.
The new study analyzed heart disease risk factors among more than 3,900 patients who were treated for ST-elevation myocardial infarction, or STEMI--the most severe and deadly type of heart attack--at Cleveland Clinic between 1995 and 2014.
Researchers have identified unique anatomical features in a species of blind, walking cavefish in Thailand that enable the fish to walk and climb waterfalls in a manner comparable to tetrapods, or four-footed mammals and amphibians.
The discovery of this capability, not seen in any other living fishes, also has implications for understanding how the anatomy that all species need to walk on land evolved after the transition from finned to limbed appendages in the Devonian period, which began some 420 million years ago.
This research is reported in Scientific Reports ("Tetrapod-like pelvic girdle in a walking cavefish," by Brooke E. Flammang, Daphne Soares, Julie Markiewicz and Apinun Suvarnaraksha - http://www.nature.com/articles/srep23711.)
Boston, MA - Botswana appears to have achieved very high rates of HIV diagnosis, treatment, and viral suppression--much better than most Western nations, including the United States--according to a new study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and colleagues in Botswana. The findings suggest that even in countries with limited resources where a large percentage of the population is infected with HIV, strong treatment programs can help make significant headway against the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Researchers from the University of Liverpool and colleagues from Action on Sugar have assessed the sugar content of over 200 fruit drinks marketed at children and have found them to be "unacceptably high".
The research, conducted by Professor Simon Capewell from the University's Institute of Psychology, Health and Society and Action on Sugar has been published today (Thursday, 24 March) in the online journal BMJ Open.
To assess the sugar content of fruit juice drinks, 100% natural juices, and smoothies marketed specifically to children, the researchers measured the quantity of 'free' sugars in 203 standard portion sizes (200 ml) of UK branded and supermarket own label products, using the pack labelling information provided.
A diet rich in vitamin C could cut risk of cataract progression by a third, suggests a study being published online today in Ophthalmology. The research is also the first to show that diet and lifestyle may play a greater role than genetics in cataract development and severity.
While there is no Hubble telescope gathering data about the universe of human development, projects to make large amounts of information -- big data -- more accessible to developmental researchers could bring behavioral science's biggest questions into focus, according to a Penn State psychologist.
"Many people, when they think about big data, think about astronomy, or physics, or biology and cancer research, but, in fact, there are big data approaches to studying human development," said Rick Gilmore, associate professor of psychology. "It's exciting that we now have the opportunity to learn how people emerge through the developmental process by taking empirical work from large numbers of investigators and aggregating that data."
MINNEAPOLIS - Exercise in older people is associated with a slower rate of decline in thinking skills that occurs with aging. People who reported light to no exercise experienced a decline equal to 10 more years of aging as compared to people who reported moderate to intense exercise, according to a population-based observational study published in the March 23, 2016, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Female cardiologists are less likely than their male counterparts to get married and have children and more likely to face challenges related to child care, family leave policies and professional discrimination, according to a study scheduled for presentation at the American College of Cardiology's 65th Annual Scientific Session.
Women are also underrepresented in the field, comprising less than 20 percent of cardiologists who see adult patients. The study, the third in a series of surveys conducted by the American College of Cardiology, revealed only slight improvements over the past 20 years.
An investigation on the effect of fish oil supplements for muscle growth reveals the tablets do not give gym-goers an advantage in the weight room.Supplements are a protected class in the United States, easily claiming drug effects without being forced to prove they work the way drugs do. Most are just expensive placebos, more akin to homeopathy and superstition than medicine, though they are heavily promoted by alternative medicine gurus such as Dr. Joe Mercola and Dr. Oz.
