News Articles

Psychologists probably won't like the implication that e-cigarettes cause mental illness, or vice versa, but in the topsy-turvy world of the American culture wars, where vaccines are bad and inhaling marijuana smoke is good, all fields are going to take their lumps.
E-cigarettes should be healthier for people - there is no smoke and smoking is what causes 10 percent of lung cancer - but there is definitely a concerted effort to undermine them. A new pape in Tobacco Control, for example, warns us that the FDA has not approved e-cigarettes as a cessation aid. It doesn't mean they are harmful or homeopathy but that is how the issue is framed. And in science and health, framing is always bad.

A shared population of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria circulates both in humans and companion animals, according to a study published this week in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

Researchers at Children's Hospital Los Angeles have discovered that by targeting a particular receptor, chemotherapy-resistant cancer cells can be killed in an acute form of childhood leukemia, offering the potential for a future treatment for patients who would otherwise experience relapse of their disease.
Nora Heisterkamp, PhD, and colleagues at The Saban Research Institute of Children's Hospital Los Angeles have discovered that by targeting the B-cell activating receptor (BAFF-R), chemotherapy-resistant precursor B acute lymphoblastic leukemia cells (pre-B ALL) can be selectively killed in vivo and in vitro. Results will be published on May 13 in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has updated its
male circumcision
guidance to say that the benefits justify access to the procedure for families who choose it. There has been debate about whether
male circumcision
 should be considered a public health action because of its potential protective effect against acquisition of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as suggested in three randomized controlled trials. A part of the debate surrounds the rate of adverse events. 

Though numbers are difficult to estimate, advocates believe one in three women around the world have experienced physical or sexual violence from a partner.
It's difficult to be sure so a few countries, notably the United States, have introduced screening program in healthcare settings to try and see what works. The results in BMJ found no evidence to support domestic violence screening.

Last year, people began wondering why part of the sun was missing.  What had happened was that changes to the magnetic field were allowing hot plasma to fly off into space toward Earth, creating a coronal hole.Coronal holes are actually happening less right now, because we are experiencing a solar maximum. During this portion of the recurring cycle, the number of coronal holes decreases. During solar max, the magnetic fields on the sun reverse and new coronal holes appear near the poles with the opposite magnetic alignment.

A research team from the Friedman Brain Institute of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has published evidence which finds that subtle changes of inhibitory signaling in the reward pathway can change how animals respond to drugs such as cocaine.
The authors say this is the first study to demonstrate the critical links between the levels of the trafficking protein, the potassium channels' effect on neuronal activity and a mouse's response to cocaine.   
The authors investigated the role of sorting nexin 27 (SNX27), a PDZ-containing protein known to bind GIRK2c/GIRK3 channels, in regulating GIRK currents in dopamine (DA) neurons on the ventral tegmental area (VTA) in mice.

Many young people know not to drive while drunk but in the wave of health claims and legislative endorsements of marijuana, the message is being lost that you will still be impaired if you are high.
Male college students who report using marijuana in the month before they were surveyed had a high prevalence of driving under its influence and of riding with a marijuana-using driver - more than double that of driving or riding after alcohol use, say researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Public Health and Health Sciences and University of Washington pediatrics department.

During the debate over the Affordable Care Act, among the biggest supporters were trial attorneys, and for obvious reasons. A government has unlimited deep pockets. Among those concerned were people in medicine who had seen the rise in 'defensive medicine' - tests and procedures everyone knows are a waste of time and money to check off boxes in case attorney sue
In the first large-scale study to directly measure such wasteful spending in Medicare, researchers found that Medicare spent $1.9 billion in 2009 for patients to receive any of 26 tests and procedures that have been shown to offer little or no health benefit.

A study of Italians who consume a diet rich in resveratrol — the compound found in red wine, dark chocolate and berries — finds they live no longer than and are just as likely to develop cardiovascular disease or cancer as those who eat a regular diet.

In 2014, drugs and alcohol are used primarily for pleasure and not to commune with nature or contact the spirit world.
In ancient times, opium poppies and hallucinogenic mushrooms were for gifted elites and their use went hand-in-hand with shamanistic belief systems and the sacred burial rituals of pre-industrial societies, according to a recent paper. 

Multiple lines of evidence incorporating 40 years of observations that six massive glaciers in the Amundsen Sea sector "have passed the point of no return", a worrisome sign for melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
Those glaciers already contribute to sea level rise, releasing as much ice into the ocean each year as the entire Greenland Ice Sheet does. They contain enough ice to boost the global sea level by 4 feet (1.2 meters) and are melting faster than most scientists had expected. Rignot said the findings will require that current predictions of sea level rise be revised upward.
Is it The Day After Tomorrow imagery that environmentalists and a lot of journalists like to create?