After decades of public safety campaigns focused on drinking and driving, it may be time to focus on the seventh leading cause of injury-related death, according to Bureau of Occupational Health and Injury Prevention at New York State Department of Health and Columbia University scholars looking at New York State.
Population studies indicate that up to 90 percent of cases of autism and what are referred to as autism spectrum disorders have some genetic component, but only 10 percent of cases can be attributed to known genetic and chromosomal syndromes.
Since several of those conditions involve deletions or duplications of chromosomal segments – including an inherited deletion of a region of chromosome 15 – investigators have conducted a complete genome scan of samples from the Autism Genome Research Exchange, which contains DNA from families in which at least one child has autism or a related disorder.
More Americans than ever before are supporting their local food markets, but it's not just because they believe the food is fresher or tastes better.
Instead, people are shopping at farmers markets and joining food co-ops in record numbers because these so-called "locavores" are driven to eat locally grown produce by desire to feel a part of something greater than themselves; part of a community that shares their passion for a healthy lifestyle and a sustainable environment.
By using medicines in unconventional ways and treating patients with a 'stepped care' approach (where the most effective yet least intensive treatment is delivered to patients first), scientists have successfully improved blood pressure control among patients with severe intolerance to antihypertensive medication.
The study devised a novel treatment strategy for 55 patients, involving fractional dosing with tablets (halving or quartering pills), liquid formulations of antihypertensive drugs and patch formulations of antihypertensive drugs - plus use of unlicensed drugs that lower blood pressure.
As college students have made their way back to campus this month, many also return to the habits, some good, some bad, that dorm-life promotes. A new survey finds that adults under 25, including high school graduates and college students, are more likely to rate hookah and e-cigarettes as safer than cigarettes, when compared to 25 to 34-year-olds, according to a paper in Health Education&Behavior.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) announces a determination of non-regulated status for a genetically engineered (GE) potato variety developed by J.R. Simplot Company (Simplot) called Innate, which has been engineered for late blight resistance, low-acrylamide potential, reduced black spot bruising, and lowered reducing sugars. The determination will be effective upon publication of the Federal Register notice announcing the decision on September 2, 2015, they wrote.
Nina Fedoroff, molecular biologist and former Science and Technology Adviser to Condoleezza Rice and then Hillary Clinton, says that genetic modification (GM) is the most critical technology in agriculture for meeting the challenges of feeding a growing global population. Fedoroff warns of the detrimental influence of politics and misinformation on the safety of GM crops and in contrast to anti-science marketing campaigns by groups like Greenpeace and NRDC that, "GM crops are arguably the safest new crops ever introduced into the human and animal food chains."
Testing the saliva of healthy older people for the level of the stress hormone cortisol may help identify individuals who should be screened for problems with thinking skills, according to a study published in Neurology. The study found that people with higher levels of cortisol in the evening were more likely to have a smaller total brain volume and to perform worse on tests of thinking and memory skills.
Could the sperm harpoon the egg to facilitate fertilization? That's the intriguing possibility raised by the University of Virginia School of Medicine's discovery that a protein within the head of the sperm forms spiky filaments, suggesting that these tiny filaments may lash together the sperm and its target.
The finding, 14 years in the making, has earned the cover of the scientific journal Andrology. It represents a significant step forward in the fine dissection of the protein architecture of the sperm's acrosomal matrix, an organelle in the sperm head, and suggests a new hypothesis concerning what happens during fertilization.
A new device transforms paralysis victims’ breath into words.Billed as a tool to help bring back the art of conversation for sufferers of severe paralysis and loss of speech, the prototype analyses changes in breathing patterns and converts ‘breath signals’ into words using pattern recognition software and an analogue-to-digital converter. A speech synthesizer then reads the words aloud.The Augmentative and Alternate Communication (AAC) device is designed for patients with complete or partial loss of voluntary muscle control who don’t have the ability to make purposeful movements such as sniffing or blinking – gestures which previous AAC devices have come to rely upon.
Before gluten sensitivity was a running joke in popular culture, medical marijuana held the preeminent position as easy humor fodder. The reason was simple: It did nothing for glaucoma, beyond the placebo range, and though the vast majority of clinical pain patients were women, 75 percent of the "medical marijuana" cardholders were men.
Parents go to great lengths to ensure the health and well-being of their developing offspring. The favor, however, may not always be returned.
Dramatic research has shown that during pregnancy, cells of the fetus often migrate through the placenta, taking up residence in many areas of the mother's body, where their influence may benefit or undermine maternal health.
The presence of fetal cells in maternal tissue is known as fetal microchimerism. The term alludes to the chimeras of ancient Greek myth--composite creatures built from different animal parts, like the goat-lion-serpent depicted in an Etruscan bronze sculpture.
If you are a hunter and accidentally shoot an endangered eagle, you could go to jail and you will certainly have a criminal record. If you are a wind turbine company, you kill 100 eagles a year and pay a token fine. An estimated 75 to 110 golden eagles die at a wind-power generation operation in Altamont, California each year. That is about one eagle for every 8 megawatts of energy produced yet no one is in Federal prison.
