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.
According to a meta-analysis published in BMC Family Practice, high dose zinc acetate lozenges may help shorten diverse symptoms associated with the common cold. The common cold is an infection caused by over a hundred viruses, and it is a major cause of days off school or work and visits to a doctor.
A previous meta-analysis of three randomized trials found that high dose zinc acetate lozenges shorten the duration of colds by 42%. Since all of the three studies reported the duration of diverse respiratory symptoms and of systemic symptoms such as muscle ache and headache, Harri Hemilä from Helsinki, Finland and Elizabeth Chalker from Sydney, Australia decided to investigate whether there are differences in the effect of zinc lozenges on different common-cold symptoms.
A rare and threatened Caribbean coral species has for the first time been successfully bred and raised in the lab, the study provides the first photos and documentation of juveniles of this species, and could provide information to help bolster local coral reef conservation. The team also plans to 'out-plant' these lab-grown juveniles in the wild which could help populations become more resilient to climate change.
Modern life and inadequate exposure to natural light during the day combined with overexposure to artificial light at night is believed by some to be harmful to the body's natural sleep/wake cycle.One of those who contends so is University of Connecticut cancer epidemiologist Richard Stevens. "It's become clear that typical lighting is affecting our physiology. But lighting can be improved. We're learning that better lighting can reduce these physiological effects. By that we mean dimmer and longer wavelengths in the evening, and avoiding the bright blue of e-readers, tablets and smart phones."
In 1996, the Nobel Prize for Chemistry went to the discoverers of Buckminsterfullerene; soccer-ball-shaped spheres of 60 joined carbon atoms that exhibit special physical properties colloquially called Buckyballs.It was only a time before someone found a way to weaponize those, but in this case for the public good: Buckybombs. But these nanoscale explosives will target and eliminate cancer at the cellular level, triggering tiny explosions that kill cancer cells without affecting surrounding tissue.
Men and women who change their diet to meet current dietary guidelines could reduce their risk of a heart attack or a stroke by up to a third, according to a new study.Scholars at King's College London recruited healthy middle-aged and older men and women to compare the effects on risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD) of following a diet based on UK health guidelines compared with a traditional British diet. The predicted risk of CVD over the next 10 years for the participants was estimated to be about 8% in the men and 4% in the women.
Cichlid fish in Lake Malawi know how to court and their courtship evolves - fast. In the shallows where the light is good, males build sand castles to attract females, while deep-dwelling species dig less elaborate pits and compensate with longer swimming displays, according to a new study.
A new map of the Moon's strangest volcano show that its explosive eruption spread debris over an area in
the Compton-Belkovich Volcanic Complex
much greater than previously thought.By mapping the radioactive element thorium which spewed out during the eruption, they discovered that, with the help of the Moon's low gravity, debris from the unnamed volcano was able to cover an area the size of Scotland, or around 70,000 km2. The eruption, which happened 3.5 billion years ago, threw rock five times further than the pyroclastic flow of molten rock and hot gases that buried the Roman city of Pompeii, the researchers added.
A tiny parasite named Pleistophora mulleri not only significantly increases cannibalism among the indigenous shrimp Gammarus duebeni celticus but made infected shrimp more voracious, taking much less time to consume their victims. Cannibalism is fairly common in nature but the belief was always that it is practical - meat is meat. Consumption of juveniles by adults is a normal feature of the shrimp's feeding patterns, but this is the first paper to show parasites cause it and even alter the feeding patterns - shrimp infected with the parasite ate twice as much of their own kind as uninfected animals. They attacked juvenile shrimp more often and consumed them more quickly than did uninfected shrimp.
Astronomers have discovered thousands of exoplanets in our Milky Way galaxy using the Kepler satellite and many of them have multiple planets orbiting the host star. By analyzing these planetary systems, researchers from the Australian National University and the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen have calculated the probability for the number of stars in the Milky Way that might have planets in the habitable zone. The calculations show that billions of the stars in the Milky Way will have one to three planets in the habitable zone, where there is the potential for liquid water and where life could exist. The results are published in the scientific journal, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Metastatic melanoma is the leading cause of skin cancer deaths in the United States; once melanoma has spread (metastasized), life expectancy for patients can be dramatically shortened. At present, the reference therapy for patients diagnosed with metastatic melanoma is Dacarbazine (DTIC), which is associated with poor patient outcomes.
An FDA-approved drug for high blood pressure, guanabenz, prevents myelin loss and alleviates clinical symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS) in animal models, according to a new study. The drug appears to enhance an innate cellular mechanism that protects myelin-producing cells against inflammatory stress. These findings point to promising avenues for the development of new therapeutics against MS, report scientists from the University of Chicago in Nature Communications on Mar. 13.
Our skeletons hold tell-tale signs that show that human bipedalism - walking upright and on two feet - are unique to humans especially when compared to our closest living relatives, apes. Exactly when these signs first appear in our evolutionary history is one of the fundamental questions driving the study of human evolution, or Palaeoanthropology, today.
An interdisciplinary team led by scientists at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, has combined visualisation techniques, engineering principles, and statistical analysis into a powerful new way of analysing the structure of long bones.
