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.
Use of reinforced ring is small but noteworthy advance for those with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, according to reports in The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery
In this important study use of a ring-reinforced shunt improved surgical outcomes in children born with a serious heart defect: hypoplastic left heart syndrome. Children with this condition undergo a series of reconstructive procedures, and getting through the first stage of surgery can be challenging. The results of this study highlight that significant progress is often built upon a multitude of small refinements. An accompanying editorial by Dr. Charles Fraser emphasizes the potential benefits that might be achieved by this small step in a long journey.
Using biofuel is one way to decrease the United States' dependence on oil. And switchgrass is an excellent candidate for biofuel production. It is an adaptable plant that can grow on millions of acres of U.S. lands that cannot support crop or food production. It is also a renewable resource but growing it and making it profitable can be complicated.
It lacks qualities, such as high biomass yield, needed to maximize biofuel production. Alternative breeding methods may be the answer.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can change the brain function of people with Tourette syndrome, said researchers at the Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal and the University of Montreal at the First World Congress on Tourette Syndrome and Tic Disorders in London.
Teenagers are very familiar with the risks of smoking cigarettes but thanks to misinformation campaigns by advocates regarding marijuana, and campaigns against the poorly-named "e-cigarettes" by pharmaceutical companies selling competing smoking cessation tools like gums and patches, they are less likely to buy into advertised claims.
"Kids were really good at describing the harmful things that happen with cigarette smoking, but when we asked about other products, there was a lot of confusion," said the study's lead author, Maria Roditis, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar in adolescent health at the Stanford University School of Medicine..
Over the past week, ESA's Integral satellite has been observing an exceptional outburst of high-energy light produced by the black hole V404 Cygni that is devouring material from its stellar companion in our Milky Way galaxy, almost 8000 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan.
Astronomers expect that galaxies grow by swallowing smaller galaxies. But the evidence is usually not easy to see -- just as the remains of the water thrown from a glass into a pond will quickly merge with the pond water, the stars in the infalling galaxy merge in with the very similar stars of the bigger galaxy leaving no trace. But now a team of astronomers led by PhD student Alessia Longobardi at the Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik , Garching, Germany has applied a clever observational trick to clearly show that the nearby giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87 merged with a smaller spiral galaxy in the last billion years.
New findings may help ease concerns for women with lupus who are interested in having a child. A new study concludes that most women with lupus whose disease is not very active will have a safe pregnancy. The results are to publish online June 22 in Annals of Internal Medicine.
It was previously suggested that women with lupus avoid pregnancy because of serious complications to their own health and the health of the baby. As more knowledge became available, doctors told women with lupus to wait until symptoms were under control, but until now, it was still uncertain whether this advice was right and whether pregnancy outcomes would be favorable.
In a new study published today in The Veterinary Journal, scientists from the University of Surrey warn about the numerous risks posed to racehorses from the misuse of cobalt chloride, a banned performance-enhancing agent that has been used illegally by trainers in Australia and USA. The team of researchers have uncovered that when excessive levels of the alleged performance-enhancing substance are administered to a horse, it can cause serious cardiovascular issues, potential nerve problems, thickening of the blood and thyroid toxicity. The researchers also pointed to the lack of evidence for enhanced performance in horses and human athletes.
Cancer and type 2 diabetes are two of the most significant public health burdens facing the world today, and currently available data suggests their prevalence is expected to continue to increase. Nut consumption has long been hypothesized to have a role in preventing both of these diseases, but until now evidence has been inconsistent. A new systematic review and meta-analysis published in Nutrition Reviews on June 16 shows that nut consumption is, indeed, associated with a decreased risk of certain types of cancer, but not type 2 diabetes.
A new approach to skin rejuvenation developed at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) may be less likely to have unintended side effects such as scarring and altered pigmentation. In the online journal Scientific Reports, an MGH research team reports that treatment with pulsed electric fields - a noninvasive procedure that does not involve the generation of heat - removed skin cells in an animal model without affecting the supporting extracellular matrix, eventually leading to renewal of the skin surface.
Inside the cell, DNA is tightly coiled and packed with several proteins into a structure called "chromatin", which allows DNA to fit in the cell while also preventing genes from being expressed at the wrong time. Guided by a chemical "barcode", specialized effector proteins can bind chromatin and either unwind it or compact further to activate or silence genes. This system has enormous implications for biology and medicine, e.g. cancer research. However, the efficiency of effector-chromatin interactions have been elusive, especially given the weak binding between the two. Tracking these interactions one molecule at a time, EPFL scientists have shown for the first time how a major effector protein speeds up its search for chromatin binding sites pairing up with others of its kind.
A new study led by Vanderbilt University Medical Center investigators found new diagnoses of prostate cancer in the U.S. declined 28 percent in the year following the draft recommendation from the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) against routine PSA screening for men. The new research, led by first author Daniel Barocas, M.D., MPH, assistant professor of urological surgery and medicine, was posted online in the June 15 issue of The Journal of Urology in advance of publication.
