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.
New species evolve whenever a lineage splits off into several branches and so a common metaphor for evolution has been to describe evolution as a 'tree of life', where every branch constitutes a species.
But since about 99.999% of all species that have ever existed are already extinct, and we have never even known about them, the tree is more like a bush with things constantly growing and falling off. Last year, a consortium of some hundred researchers reported that the relationship between all major bird clades had been mapped out by analyzing the complete genome of around 50 bird species. This included the exact order in which the various lineages had diverged.
Both donors and recipients want more information about each others' health before participating in transplant surgeries, according to a study which challenges current practices and policies on information disclosure for prospective living kidney donors and their intended recipients..
For students, the start of the school year means new classes, new friends, homework and sports. It also brings the threat of head lice. The itch-inducing pests lead to missed school days and frustrated parents, who could have even more reason to be wary of the bug this year. Scientists report that lice populations in at least 25 states have developed resistance to over-the-counter treatments still widely recommended by doctors and schools.
The researchers are presenting their work today at the 250th National Meeting&Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society. The meeting features more than 9,000 presentations on a wide range of science topics and is being held here through Thursday.
A team of researchers has discovered a Jupiter-like planet within a young system that could provide a new understanding of how planets formed around our sun.
The new planet, called 51 Eridani b, is the first exoplanet discovered by the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI), a new instrument operated by an international collaboration headed by Bruce Macintosh, a professor of physics in the Kavli Institute at Stanford University. It is a million times fainter than its star and shows the strongest methane signature ever detected on an alien planet, which should yield additional clues as to how the planet formed.
Dosing obese teens with vitamin D shows no benefits for their heart health or diabetes risk, and could have the unintended consequences of increasing cholesterol and fat-storing triglycerides. These are the latest findings in a series of Mayo Clinic studies in childhood obesity.
Seema Kumar, M.D., a pediatric endocrinologist in the Mayo Clinic Children's Center, has been studying the effects of vitamin D supplementation in children for 10 years, through four clinical trials and six published studies. To date, Dr. Kumar's team has found limited benefit from vitamin D supplements in adolescents. The latest study, Effect of Vitamin D3 Treatment on Endothelial Function in Obese Adolescents, appears online in Pediatric Obesity.
Sepsis kills more Americans every year than AIDS, breast cancer and prostate cancer combined but it gets far less attention. Unlike those other diseases, hours can make the difference between life and death in sepsis.
The results of a recent study show that children who report eating more polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), found in tree nuts, seeds and fatty fish, and consume a higher ratio of PUFA: saturated fatty acids (SFAs), have more lean body mass, lower percent body fat, and less intra-abdominal fat (belly fat).
The study was published in "The Journal of Nutrition" and conducted by researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Health and Wellness Center and the University of Colorado School of Medicine at the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Colo. in collaboration with the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Male and female brains operate differently at a molecular level, according to a new study of a brain region involved in learning and memory and responses to stress and epilepsy. Many brain disorders vary between the sexes, but how biology and culture contribute to these differences has been unclear. The neuroscientists found an intrinsic biological difference between males and females in the molecular regulation of synapses in the hippocampus. This provides a scientific reason to believe that female and male brains may respond differently to drugs targeting certain synaptic pathways.
The crucial genetic mashup that spawned the yeast that brews the vast majority of beer occurred at least twice -- and both times without human help -- according to a new study.
More than 2.7 million people in the United States are infected with the hepatitis C virus, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and people infected with the hepatitis C virus are at risk for liver damage, but the results of a new Johns Hopkins study now show the infection may also bring heart trouble.
Gang slayings move in a systematic pattern over time, spreading from one vulnerable area to the next like a disease, according to a paper by Michigan State University criminologists and public health researchers. That means there is a threshold where herd immunity takes effect, just like vaccines, but letting too many people opt out risks the whole community.
There were 2,363 gang-related killings in the United States in 2012, the highest number in at least six years, according to the latest available estimates from the Department of Justice. Gang membership also increased, to 850,000 in 2012 from 788,000 in 2007.
If you care about the environment, you should eat the steak and throw out the salad, according to University of Missouri researchers who say that the type of food wasted has a significant impact on the environment.
Approximately 31 percent of food produced in the U.S., or 133 billion pounds of food worth $162 billion, was wasted in 2011 according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
