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.
Patients with carpal tunnel syndrome are more than twice as likely to have migraine headaches, reports a study in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery--Global Open. The association also runs in the other direction, with migraine patients having higher odds of carpal tunnel syndrome.
The researchers analyzed data from nearly 26,000 Americans responding to a national health survey. Among other questions, participants were asked whether they had had carpal tunnel syndrome during the past year or "severe headache or migraine" during the past three months. Patients with carpal tunnel syndrome have symptoms such as hand numbness and weakness, resulting from pressure on the median nerve in the wrist.
Verbal abuse, aggressive behavior, criminal damage to objects are expected in certain professions but hardly anyone includes doctors, although they are exposed to such incidents - and not just in dictatorships or the developing world.
Florian Vorderwülbecke and colleagues writing in Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2015; 112: 159-65) investigate how often acts of violence and aggression against primary care physicians are committed in Germany. They surveyed 1500 doctors, asking which assaults they had been exposed to, and where these took place, among other questions.
A 3-dimensional model of human respiratory tissue has been shown to be effective for measuring the impact of chemicals, like those found in cigarette smoke or other aerosols, on the lung.
More effective lab-based tests are required to reduce the need for animal testing in assessing the toxicological effects of inhaled chemicals and safety of medicines. Traditional lab-based tests use cell lines that do not reflect normal lung structure and physiology, and in some cases have reduced, or loss of, key metabolic processes.
Nasal drops of harmless bacteria can inhibit a related bug that sometimes causes meningococcal disease, according to new findings published online in Clinical Infectious Diseases. The study--conducted among college students, a group at higher risk for this often serious illness--suggests a new approach that could help suppress outbreaks of the disease, if supported by future research.
Meningococcal disease is caused by Neisseria meningitidis, which can infect the lining of the brain and the spinal cord, causing meningitis. Strains of the bacteria can also cause serious bloodstream infections. But N. meningitidis can also live silently in a person's nose and throat, without illness. These "colonized" carriers can spread the pathogen to others through close contact.
A team of researchers has identified a new genetic cause of the disease by focusing on a rare genetic variant which offers important insights into the root causes of autism, they believe. And, they suggest, their unconventional method can be used to identify other genetic causes of autism and other complex genetic conditions.
A study published today describes a newly-discovered, heritable genetic cause of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), namely mutation of the gene ETV6. Much like mutation of the gene BRCA marks people at risk to develop breast and ovarian cancers, identification of mutations in the gene ETV6 may allow doctors to predict the development of ALL, allowing increased monitoring and in the future, perhaps strategies to prevent the disease. There are just over 30,000 cases of ALL diagnosed in the United States each year, with the majority of those cases being in children ages 2-5.
Writers, athletes and athletes can tell you that sometimes being too focused in a bad thing. You need to relax a little, especially if, as the old saying goes, being focused causes you to lose sight of the forest among all those trees.
Bioplastics are used in medical applications such as wound healing dressings, sutures, catheter tubes and drug delivery and bioplastics made from protein sources such as albumin and whey have shown significant antibacterial properties.They could even be used for food packaging, according to a recent study by the University of Georgia College of Family and Consumer Sciences.
A new paper concludes that there is limited evidence to show that xylitol prevents dental cavities in children and adults. Xylitol is a natural sweetener that is widely promoted globally, and can be found in wide range of everyday products including sugar-free chewing gum, toothpaste, gels, lozenges and sweets.
In the production of organic vegetables, nitrogen is important, yet can be quite costly to manage. Nitrogen management is even more challenging when production practices call for the use of polyethylene mulch combined with fertigation. The authors of a new study published in HortScience have found that hydrolyzed fish fertilizer holds promise as an "economically feasible" nitrogen source for growing organic vegetables.
What do butterflies, spiders and lobsters share in common? Yawunik kootenayi, a marine creature with two pairs of eyes and prominent grasping appendages that lived 250 million years before the first dinosaur.The fossil recently identified is the first new species to be described from the Marble Canyon site, part of the Canadian Burgess Shale fossil deposit.Yawunik had evolved long frontal appendages that resemble the antennae of modern beetles or shrimps, though these appendages were composed of three long claws, two of which bore opposing rows of teeth that helped the animal catch its prey.
Before a male damselfly hot-headedly enters into a duel of aerial sparring, it first works out its strategy. It gives its opponent's wings a once-over to assess its strength, knowing that more transparent wings and larger red spots generally show a stronger rival. Those who then decide to engage in long fights either try to wear their opponent down, or dazzle them with brilliant aerial moves that are too hard to follow. These damselfly war game strategies are set out in a study published in Springer's journal The Science of Nature - Naturwissenschaften. Two research groups united forces to arrive at these findings, one based in Brazil, led by Rhainer Guillermo-Ferreira, and the other in Germany, led by Stanislav Gorb.
