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.
Contrary to claims by proponents, only a minimal amount of heavy metals are removed in the hookah 'filtration' process. On average, only 3% of heavy metals present in tobacco are removed and this would not be enough to protect users from exposure to the toxins. Shisha smokers claim that a hookah is less damaging than cigarette smoking due to 'filtering' by bubbling through water but a typical hookah smoking session can expose someone to 100-200 times the volume of smoke in a single cigarette.
There has been a long-running belief that greedy insurance companies deny patients needed care to maintain profits but in hindsight it seems to have been just the opposite; health care was expensive because of defensive medicine policies needed to ward off lawsuits that could happen even if the care was fine but did not work.Another example is dialysis for kidney patients. About 400,000 Americans are on it and many of them started sooner than ever before. There is no measurable difference in how sick patients are at the time of initiation or in the reasons for dialysis initiation other than doctors made a choice. The average cost per patient annually: $72,000.
Mitochondria, the energy power plants inside our cells, are able to oxidize the food we eat to create a universal energy currency for all our currency. These intracellular organelles possess their own DNA, and proteins derived from their genetic instructions are produced according to a specific process which is not well known. What is well-known is that misregulation of this process can cause mitochondrial diseases in humans. A team led by Jean-Claude Martinou, professor at the Faculty of Science of the University of Geneva (UNIGE), has discovered a new component of the process which was unknown in mammals. It relates to the biogenesis of ND6, a protein essential for mitochondrial activity and provides insight into the general process of mitochondrial RNA maturation.
Genetically modified crops have long drawn fire from environmentalists, who worry that there could be contamination of organic food or creation of FrankenWeeds. Properly used, there is no chance of that, the only thing that can happen is trace material. Still, they have worries and science may have an answer: modern plant genes damaging the claims of the $105 billion organic food industry might be mitigated by...plant genes.
Precision medicine could prevent the flawed 'one size fits all' diet recommendations we currently get from the federal government and self-professed nutrition experts who latch onto the latest fad to sell books.29 million Americans already already have diabetes and the way to separate those with the highest risk of developing the disease from those with lower risk, and channel resources into areas most likely to help each of them individually, is the goal of the "precision medicine" approach.
Diabetes is a significant risk factor for developing eye diseases and the most common diabetic eye disease and a leading cause of blindness is diabetic retinopathy, which is caused by elevated blood sugar levels damaging the blood vessels of the retina and affects approximately 7.7 million Americans. About 750,000 Americans with diabetic retinopathy have diabetic macular edema (DME) in which fluid leaks into the macula, the area of the retina used when looking straight ahead. The fluid causes the macula to swell, blurring vision.
Cancer vaccines turn the body's own immune system specifically against tumor cells and one area of study are vaccines that are directed against neoantigens, proteins that have undergone a genetic mutation in tumor cells and are therefore different than counterparts in healthy cells.
In 2006, a somewhat common yet unpredictable decline in bees occurred, just as had happened in previous decades and leading back as long as anecdotal records have been kept. While scientists tried to determine the cause, various constituents rushed to lay blame for this new short-term decline on various environmental factors. The science consensus was that it was parasites but while the investigation was ongoing, the European Union wanted to know if it was due to a newer class of pesticides, called neonicotinoids, that had been introduced as a safe alternative a decade earlier, due to a mass die-off of bees. Bee numbers have rebounded nicely but the report says they are not out of the woods yet.
The origin of curious ring-like structures that formed half a billion years ago on a seabed in Wisconsin is an ancient unsolved riddle and academics would like you to help them figure it out.It makes sense, since it was citizen scientist paleontologists that discovered the almost perfectly circular rings some 30 years ago. Nigel Hughes, a professor of paleobiology in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of California, Riverside, wants to know if they are the result of a physical process or the activity of an ancient organism - and a cool $500 is in it if you do what the pros cannot.
A team of archaeologists and other researchers hope that an ancient graveyard in Italy can yield clues about the deadly bacterium that causes cholera.
The researchers are excavating the graveyard surrounding the abandoned Badia Pozzeveri church in the Tuscany region of Italy. The site contains victims of the cholera epidemic that swept the world in the 1850s, said Clark Spencer Larsen, professor of anthropology at The Ohio State University and one of the leaders of the excavation team. Archaeologists and their students have spent the past four summers painstakingly excavating remains in a special section of the cemetery used for cholera victims.
Using Twitter can help physicians be better prepared to answer questions from their patients, according to researchers from the University of British Columbia. This challenges common opinion that physicians are reluctant to jump on the social media bandwagon.
Make way for a new color under the sea. The orange tint in Leafy Seadragons and the yellow and purple hues of Common Seadragons is now getting some red: Scientists have discovered a new species named Phyllopteryx dewysea, which means Ruby Seadragon.The discovery was made while researching the two known species of seadragons as part of an effort to understand and protect the exotic and delicate fish. Using DNA and anatomical research tools, University of California - San Diego graduate student Josefin Stiller and marine biologists Nerida Wilson of the Western Australia Museum (WAM) and Greg Rouse of Scripps Oceanography found evidence for the new species while analyzing tissue samples.
