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.
Adult sea turtles find their way back to the beaches where they hatched by seeking out unique magnetic signatures along the coast, according to new evidence.
"Sea turtles migrate across thousands of miles of ocean before returning to nest on the same stretch of coastline where they hatched, but how they do this has mystified scientists for more than fifty years," says J. Roger Brothers of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. "Our results provide evidence that turtles imprint on the unique magnetic field of their natal beach as hatchlings and then use this information to return as adults."
A new study found a causal link between the activation of serotonin neurons and the amount of time mice are willing to wait, and rejected a possible link between increased serotonin neuron activation and reward.
Serotonin is a neuromodulatory chemical that is targeted by antidepressant drugs, such as Prozac, which are widely used to treat depression and other disorders such as chronic pain. Serotonin is normally released by a small set of cells in an area of the brain called the raphe nuclei. However, what naturally causes these neurons to become active and release serotonin and how this affects brain function are still poorly understood.
A National Institutes of Health white paper that was released today finds little to no evidence for the effectiveness of opioid drugs in the treatment of long-term chronic pain, despite the explosive recent growth in the use of the drugs.
The paper, which constitutes the final report of a seven-member panel convened by the NIH last September, finds that many of the studies used to justify the prescription of these drugs were either poorly conducted or of an insufficient duration.
An NIH white paper finds little to no evidence for the effectiveness of opioid drugs in the treatment of long-term chronic pain.
A study has found that reducing expression of the Myc gene - found in the genomes of all animals, ranging from ancestral single-celled organisms to humans - significantly increased the healthy lifespan of laboratory mice, the first such finding regarding this gene in a mammalian species.Myc is a major topic of biomedical research and has been shown to be a central regulator of cell proliferation, growth, and death. Though animals cannot live without it, in humans and mice too much expression of the protein that Myc encodes has been closely linked to cancer, making it a well-known but elusive target of drug developers.
Political conservatives in the United States are somewhat like East Asians in the way they think, categorize and perceive, while liberals in the U.S. are more extreme in thought, categorization and perception, according to a new cultural psychology analysis.
We use our hands a lot each day. Humans have highly developed fine motor skills and so we are able to perform grasping movements with variable precision and power distribution, everything from tying our shoelaces to holding a balloon.
An analysis of Danish women of reproductive age suggests that long-term use of hormonal contraceptives is associated with an increased risk of brain tumors. Hormonal contraceptives, commonly called "the pill" in oral contraceptive, contain female sex hormones and are commonly referenced as the foundation of the "sexual revolution" in the 1960s because widespread usage has given women all over the world control over childbearing.
In the brain, blood flow and cognitive function peak during young adulthood, but a new study of 52 young women found that oxygen availability, which is known to positively relate to brain health and function, is higher in adults who exercise regularly.
Women who exercised on a regular basis had higher oxygen availability in the anterior frontal region of the brain and performed best on difficult cognitive tasks.
“Our findings suggest that regular engagement in physical activity may improve brain functioning even in young adults in their prime,” said Dr. Liana Machado, senior author of the Psychophysiology study. “Both blood supply to the brain and cognitive functioning appear to benefit from regular exercise.
If someone won't move around for 20 minutes a day, can anything more be done to help people get off the couch?Too much sitting has been linked to increased risk of chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and some types of cancer. Current guidelines suggest adults do 150 minutes of moderate intensity activity a week, but more than a third (35.6%) of adults worldwide don't do that. And the proportion of time spent being inactive rises with age: from 55% (7.7 hours) at 20-29 years, to 67% (9.6 hours) in those aged 70-79 years.
The use of animal translocations as a means to mitigate construction projects and other human developments is a widespread animal-management tool. A paper published today, produced through collaboration of conservationists from San Diego Zoo Global, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, University of Kent UK, University of Newcastle and Amphibian and Reptile Conservation, reviews the success rates associated with these moves from a species-conservation standpoint.
Let's be honest, review articles are popular because they are easier than studies. Studies can take months or years and require methodology, money and expertise. A review just means finding other papers and figuring out what the consensus is.Want to prove acupuncture works and that organic food is superior? Do a review. And if you really want to promote an ideology, do an unweighted random-effects meta-analysis and make sure to include some outlier results.
Optimization algorithms seek to find the minimum values of mathematical functions in engineering. It's how engineers evaluate design trade-offs, assess control systems and how people find patterns in data.One practical way to solve a difficult optimization problem is to first reduce it to a related but much simpler problem, then gradually add complexity back in, solving each new problem in turn and using its solution as a guide to solving the next one. If only someone could find a way to characterize optimization theoretically. You know, optimize it.
