UAE
Bahrain
Jordan
Kuwait
Oman
Qatar
Saudi ArabiaHealth News
Farm visits ideal for teaching children about germs
Date: Oct-18-2013School children demonstrated significantly increased knowledge of germ spread and prevention on a farm after working on an interactive lesson about microbes. Published October 16, 2013, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Meredith K. D. Hawking and colleagues from Public Health England, these results show the measurable benefits of education in increasing children's knowledge about the risk of infection during school farm visits, and the spread of harmful germs...
Neurons strengthen their synapses in order to remain active after loss of input
Date: Oct-18-2013The brain is an extremely adaptable organ - but it is also quite conservative. That's in short, what scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried and their colleagues from the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel and the Ruhr-Universitat Bochum were now able to show. The researchers found that neurons in the brain regulate their own activity in such a way that the overall activity level in the network remains as constant as possible...
The dangers of Wi-Fi in cars
Date: Oct-18-2013Plans to provide high-speed Internet access in vehicles, announced last month by Canadian telecommunications company Rogers Communications and American provider Sprint Corporation, could do with some sobering second-thought, says a researcher in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto. "Because of the potential for driver distraction, safety should be of great concern," said Professor Ian Spence, author of a new study on the impact of auditory distractions on visual attention...
The biggest cause of anxiety and depression is traumatic life events
Date: Oct-18-2013A study by psychologists at the University of Liverpool has found that traumatic life events are the biggest cause of anxiety and depression, but how a person thinks about these events determines the level of stress they experience. Researchers from the University's Institute of Psychology, Health and Society analysed the responses of over 32,000 participants, aged 18 - 85 years, who completed the BBC's `Stress Test', an online survey to explore the causes and consequences of stress...
Poor rural youth in Haiti are rich in family ties, rooted in their own culture
Date: Oct-18-2013Haitian teens, especially those who live in the country's rural areas, are among the poorest persons in the Western Hemisphere, but they are rich in their family relationships and strongly rooted in their own culture, a University of Illinois study finds. "It's true that rural Haitian teens didn't directly suffer the major trauma of the 2012 earthquake, but they deal daily with the effects of poverty - not enough food, no money to go to school, a lack of electricity much of the time, little access to clinics or hospitals," said Gail M...
Drug-resistant bacteria destroyed by narrow-spectrum UV light
Date: Oct-18-2013Despite major efforts to keep operating rooms sterile, surgical wound infections remain a serious and stubborn problem, killing up to 8,200 patients a year in the U.S. A study by Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers suggests that narrow-spectrum ultraviolet (UV) light could dramatically reduce such infections without damaging human tissue. The study, conducted in tissue culture, was published in the journal PLOS ONE. Approximately 200,000 to 300,000 patients suffer surgical wound infections in the U.S...
Potential new way to treat chronic kidney disease and heart failure
Date: Oct-18-2013Researchers at St. Michael's Hospital are using adult bone marrow stem cells as they investigate a completely new way of treating chronic kidney disease and heart failure in rats. Dr. Darren Yuen and Dr. Richard Gilbert were the first to show, in 2010, that enriched stem cells improved heart and kidney function in rats with both diseases. But they and other scientists wondered about the potential side effects of returning those cells to the body, such as forming tumours. In a paper published online in the journal Stem Cells, Drs...
Stem cell-based approach manipulates brain cells, targets specific gene mutations causing dementia and ALS
Date: Oct-18-2013Johns Hopkins scientists have developed new drugs that - at least in a laboratory dish - appear to halt the brain-destroying impact of a genetic mutation at work in some forms of two incurable diseases, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and dementia. They made the finding by using neurons they created from stem cells known as induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), which are derived from the skin of people with ALS who have a gene mutation that interferes with the process of making proteins needed for normal neuron function...
Discovery of a neural firing-rate set point opens the door to eventual treatment for devastating disorders
Date: Oct-18-2013As we learn and develop, our neurons change. They make new pathways and connections as our brain processes new information. In order to do this, individual neurons use an internal gauge to maintain a delicate balance that keeps our brains from becoming too excitable. Scientists have long theorized a larger internal system monitors these individual gauges, like a neural thermostat, regulating average firing rates across the whole brain. Without this thermostat, they reasoned, our flexible neurons would fire out of control, making bad connections or none at all...
Mass shootings unlikely to be eliminated by removing guns from mentally ill
Date: Oct-18-2013A string of public mass shootings during the past decade-plus have rocked America leaving policymakers and mental health experts alike fishing for solutions to prevent these heinous crimes. A Mayo Clinic physician, however, argues that at least one proposal won't stop the public massacres: restricting gun access to the mentally ill. J. Michael Bostwick, M.D., a Mayo Clinic psychiatrist and author of the editorial published online in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, argues several points including that mass shootings are carefully planned - often spanning weeks or months...
Stay Connected
