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.
When you look at a primate or neanderthal skull and compare it to modern humans, it is immediately noticeable that we have a feature they are missing.In fact, it's missing from all other species: A chin.Why do we? A new study finds that our chins didn't come from mechanical forces such as chewing, but instead results from an evolutionary adaptation involving face size and shape, possibly linked to changes in hormone levels as we became more societally domesticated. If true, it would settle a debate that's gone on for more than a century, and anthropology would have solved it rather than biology.
Skin is remarkably resistant to tearing and a team of researchers from the University of California, San Diego and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory now have shown why. Using powerful X-ray beams and electron microscopy, researchers made the first direct observations of the micro-scale mechanisms that allow skin to resist tearing. They identified four specific mechanisms in collagen, the main structural protein in skin tissue, that act together to diminish the effects of stress: rotation, straightening, stretching, and sliding. Researchers say they hope to replicate these mechanisms in synthetic materials to provide increased strength and in better resistance to tearing.
Bacteria have an immune system to fight off invasive viruses called phages, and like any immune system, from single-celled to human, the first challenge of the bacterial immune system is to detect the difference between “foreign” and “self.” Since all living things are made of DNA and proteins, how do viruses and bacteria recognize their own? “In most environments, phages are around ten times more abundant than bacteria. And, like all viruses, phages use the host cell’s replication machinery to make copies of themselves,” says Prof. Rotem Sorek of the Weizmann Institute’s Department of Molecular Genetics. “And they are constantly evolving new ways to do this. So bacteria need a very active immune system to survive.”
While mandatory labels for organic or genetically modified foods have been regarded by the public as unnecessary bureaucracy, a group of analysts are calling for just that when it comes to wine.Production methods and added chemicals can affect the color and taste and should be noted, the authors of a new study write. Dr. Heli Sirén and colleagues from the University of Helsinki analyzed the chemical profiles of eight Pinot Noir wines from different regions in the USA, France, New Zealand and Chile and they found that each wine had a different profile, affected by the processes used to make it.
Methane is a greenhouse gas with more warming impact than carbon dioxide but also fortunately a much shorter life in the atmosphere.Due to the popularity of much cleaner natural gas, which has caused CO2 emissions to drop, there are concerns about methane but the big source is nature herself - decomposition of organic material, a complex process involving bacteria and microbes, is a big culprit.
When a heart attack strikes, the effects are lingering: heart muscle cells die and scar tissue forms, which makes future heart failure more likely.
Since we have been hearing about quantum computing for decades with no real applied breakthroughs, it may be necessary to use technology available now to edge close to computers that act like brains.A team wants to create the functionality of
a network of neurons
using memory resistors - memristors - which are resistors in a circuit that "remember" how much current has flowed through them.
Adolescent obesity is a national public health concern and, unchecked, places young people on a trajectory for a variety of health issues as they grow older. A new study from the University of Houston Department of Health and Human Performance (HHP) and Texas Obesity Research Center (TORC) suggests there is a relationship between long-term exposure to three specific types of family stressors and children becoming obese by the time they turn 18 years old.
Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, Assistant Professor Daphne Hernandez examined three family stress points ¬- family disruption, financial stress and maternal poor health - and applied those to data of more than 4,700 adolescents born between 1975 and 1990.
An unusual and very exciting form of carbon - that can be created by drawing on paper- looks to hold the key to real-time, high throughput DNA sequencing, a technique that would revolutionize medical research and testing. Led by Dr Jiri Cervenka and PhD candidate Nikolai Dontschuk from the University of Melbourne, the study also included scientists from the Australian Synchrotron and La Trobe University and is published in Nature Communications.
The Australian researchers have shown that graphene- a one-atom thick sheet of hexagonally arranged carbon, shaped like chicken wire - can detect the four nucleobases that make up DNA (cytosine, guanine, adenine and thymine).
Nutrition and metabolism are closely linked with reproductive health. Several reproductive disorders including polycystic ovary syndrome, amenorrhea, and ovarian cancer have been linked to malnutrition, diabetes, and obesity. Furthermore, fasting in numerous species can result in decreased fertility, because the development of immature egg cells, called oocytes, is arrested. Understanding how nutrients accumulate in immature oocytes will provide valuable insights into the link between metabolic disease and reproductive dysfunction.
Physical activity that makes you puff and sweat is key to avoiding an early death, a large Australian study of middle-aged and older adults has found.
The researchers followed 204,542 people for more than six years, and compared those who engaged in only moderate activity (such as gentle swimming, social tennis, or household chores) with those who included at least some vigorous activity (such as jogging, aerobics or competitive tennis).
They found that the risk of mortality for those who included some vigorous activity was 9 to 13 per cent lower, compared with those who only undertook moderate activity.
txt msgs r running language
*ruining
^lol, jk!! :)
In many casual discussions of language and the internet, it’s not uncommon to hear about how such “textspeak ruins language” – how technology has made everybody lazy with their speech and writing. Major media outlets such as the LA Times, the BBC and The Daily Mail have all bemoaned the ways in which people communicate through technology.
