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 research has revealed that parasitic 'vampire' plants that attach onto and derive nutrients from another living plant may benefit the abundance and diversity of surrounding vegetation and animal life.
By altering the densities of the hemiparasite (a parasitic plant that also photosynthesises) Rhinanthus minor, in the Castle Hill National Nature Reserve in Sussex, ecologists from the Universities of York, Sussex and Lincoln were able to assess the impacts of the 'vampire' plants on the biodiversity of a species-rich semi-natural grassland. The scientists compared the plant and invertebrate communities in areas where R. minor was removed, left at natural densities, or increased in abundance.
Having a stroke ages a person's brain function by almost eight years, new research finds - robbing them of memory and thinking speed as measured on cognitive tests.
In both black and white patients, having had a stroke meant that their score on a 27-item test of memory and thinking speed had dropped as much as it would have if they had aged 7.9 years overnight. For the study, data from more than 4,900 black and white seniors over the age of 65 was analyzed by a team from the University of Michigan U-M Medical School and School of Public Health and the VA Center for Clinical Management Research.
Credit: University of Michigan
A study in mice reveals that hormones that dictate a female's attraction towards males do so in part by controlling her sense of smell.
The investigators analyzed female mice at various stages of the ovulation cycle and found that when a female is not ready for reproduction, her hormones (specifically progesterone) block her ability to sense the smell of male pheromones.
These hormones diminish during ovulation, eventually allowing a female mouse to smell a potential partner. When ovulation ends, the cycle repeats, and she is again rendered "odor-blind" to males.
Scientists have found that a drug candidate with anticancer potential can be activated by one of the body's natural responses to cellular stress.
Once activated, the agent can kill prostate cancer cells.
The study highlights the potential of the natural compound called leinamycin E1 (LNM) for development as a "prodrug," a medication converted through a metabolic process in the body to become an active therapy.
A study of parental age and autism risk including
5.7 million children in five countries
found increased autism rates among the children of teen moms and among children whose parents have relatively large gaps between their ages. It also confirmed that older parents are at higher risk of having children with autism.
Though previous studies identified a link between advancing parental age and autism risk, many aspects of the association remained unclear. For example, some studies found increased risk with older dads but not moms. The goal of the new study was to determine whether advancing maternal or paternal ages independently increase autism risk, and to what extent each might do so.
Imaging lung cancer requires both precision and innovation and clinical positron emission tomography (PET) imaging reates advanced whole-body parametric maps, which allow quantitative evaluation of tumors and metastases throughout the body, according to research announced at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI).
Real-time brain scans coupled with a machine-learning algorithm can reveal whether a person has memory of a particular subject, but with a little bit of concentration people can easily hide their memories from the computer.
Memory is obviously important, in areas like eyewitness testimony, medicine and even marketing. Programs that can read a person's brain scan data and surmise whether that person is experiencing a memory could be important for those reasons.
But with just a little bit of coaching and concentration, subjects are easily able to obscure real memories, or even create fibs that look like real memories, on brain scans. For cooperative subjects, things are good, but for high-stakes situations knowing they can be spoofed is important.
Electronic devices that can be injected directly into the brain, or other body parts, have been a staple of science fiction for decades - and they seem a little closer to reality if you visit Charles Lieber's chemistry lab at Harvard.
A team of international researchers, led by Lieber, has developed a method for fabricating nano-scale electronic scaffolds that can be injected via syringe. Once connected to electronic devices, the scaffolds can be used to monitor neural activity, stimulate tissues and even promote regenerations of neurons.
In collaboration with the United States Department of Agriculture, the University of the Basque Country Department of Analytical Chemistry has identified the volatile compounds in damaged walnuts that insects find attractive and which is threatening the harvests of these nuts in California.
These are the first studies carried out on walnuts which are designed to specify the components of the aroma and which can be used to control the moth pests in the most sustainable way, besides helping to cut the use of pesticides and control agents.
Food wasted means money wasted which can be an expensive problem especially in homes with financial constraints. A new study from the Cornell Food and Brand Lab and the Getulio Vargas Foundation, shows that the top causes of food waste in such homes include buying too much, preparing in abundance, unwillingness to consume leftovers, and improper food storage.
"Fortunately," notes lead author Gustavo Porpino, PhD candidate at the Getulio Vargas Foundation and Visiting Scholar at the Cornell Food and Brand Lab, "most of the factors that lead to food waste, can be easily remedied by simple changes in food buying, preparing, and storing."
A new psoriasis drug,
ixekizumab
, has resulted in 40 percent of people showing a complete clearance of psoriatic plaques after 12 weeks of treatment and over 90 percent showing improvement.
A psychologist and an English professor have written a review of studies and concluded that pigs perform as well as or better than dogs on some tests of behavioral and cognitive sophistication, and they compare favorably to chimpanzees. The review by Emory psychologist Dr. Lori Marino and visiting English Professor Christina M. Colvin, seeks to extrapolate results to deduce what we do and do not know about pigs. The areas they discuss include cognition, emotion, self-awareness, personality and social complexity. They conclude that “pigs possess complex ethological traits similar … to dogs and chimpanzees.” For example, pigs:
