Health News

BYU Study Says Exercise May Reduce Motivation For Food

Date: Sep-16-2012
It is commonly assumed that you can "work up an appetite" with a vigorous workout. Turns out that theory may not be completely accurate - at least immediately following exercise. New research out of BYU shows that 45 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous exercise in the morning actually reduces a person's motivation for food. Professors James LeCheminant and Michael Larson measured the neural activity of 35 women while they viewed food images, both following a morning of exercise and a morning without exercise...

HF/E Researchers Examine Older Adults' Willingness To Accept Help From Robots

Date: Sep-16-2012
Most older adults prefer to maintain their independence and remain in their own homes as they age, and robotic technology can help make this a reality. Robots can assist with a variety of everyday living tasks, but limited research exists on seniors' attitudes toward and acceptance of robots as caregivers and aides. Human factors/ergonomics researchers investigated older adults' willingness to receive robot assistance that allows them to age in place, and will present their findings at the upcoming HFES 56th Annual Meeting in Boston...

When Battered Women Fight Back Stereotyping Can Kick In

Date: Sep-16-2012
The topic of domestic abuse remains a controversial issue when it comes to determining punishment for battered women who use violence towards their partner. According to a recent study published in Psychology of Women Quarterly, a SAGE Journal, battered women who are seen as engaging in mutual violence and shared substance abuse are often regarded negatively and subject to harsher sentences. Study Author Elisabeth C. Wells analyzed the reasoning underlying judges' sentencing decisions in 26 domestic homicide and abuse cases from 1974-2006 in Canada...

Feeding Microbials To Chickens Leads To Mysterious Immune Response

Date: Sep-16-2012
A paper recently published in the Journal of Animal Science helps researchers further understand how microbials and probiotics affect poultry health. Researchers at the North Carolina State University and Chung Jen College of Nursing, Health Sciences and Management (Taiwan) conducted a study to investigate the effects of direct fed microbials on energy metabolism in different tissues of broiler chickens. The researchers wanted to learn how consuming microbials and probiotics could change energy use and immune function...

Killer Virus Uses Protein Wrap To Evade Immune System

Date: Sep-15-2012
One of the deadliest pathogens on our planet is the Marburg virus, which can kill up to 9 out of 10 people it infects. Now scientists at The Scripps Research Institute in the US have discovered how this close cousin of the Ebola virus wraps a protein around its RNA to mask itself from the host immune system, allowing it to multiply unchecked. Writing about their work in the 13 September issue of the online open access journal PLoS Pathogens, lead researcher Erica Ollmann Saphire, and colleagues, suggest their breakthrough offers new targets for drugs and vaccines...

Comparison Of Immigrant Children In 4 Nations Shows Strengths, Lags

Date: Sep-15-2012
Young children whose families immigrate to Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States are as prepared and capable of starting school as their native-born counterparts, with one exception - vocabulary and language development. That's the finding of a new study published in the September/October 2012 issue of the journal Child Development in a special section on the children of immigrants...

New Knee Implant Is Changing The Way Patients And Surgeons View Revision Hinged Knee Replacement

Date: Sep-15-2012
Smith & Nephew (NYSE: SNN; LSE: SN), the global medical technology business, today announced the launch of its LEGION(TM) HK Hinge Knee implant to surgeons in the US and Canada. As the first hinged knee to be designed using normal knee kinematics, the implant provides a new option for those patients facing difficult primary or revision knee surgery. "This signals a real change in the hinge knee landscape," explains Gaurav Agarwal, DSVP and General Manager for Smith & Nephew's Advanced Surgical Devices division...

Socioeconomic Status Determines Lung Transplant Approval Rates

Date: Sep-15-2012
After initial evaluations, patients with adult cystic fibrosis (CF) have a greater likelihood of not being accepted for lung transplants. Lead author Bradley S. Quon, MD, MSc, MBA, of the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle and his team conducted a new study that established, for the first time, many factors indicating socioeconomic status is linked with greater rates of not being accepted for transplant...

Breakthrough Method Of Delivering Drugs Under The Skin

Date: Sep-15-2012
Researchers from MIT have discovered a method to make delivering drugs through skin easier, in doing this, noninvasive drug delivery and vaccines without needles may become possibilities. Carl Schoellhammer, an MIT graduate student in chemical engineering and one of the lead authors of a new paper concerning the new method, commented: "This could be used for topical drugs such as steroids - cortisol, for example- systematic drugs and proteins such as insulin, aswell as antigens for vaccination, among many other things...

Neuronal Circuits In Autism Can Be Reversed

Date: Sep-15-2012
People with autism suffer from a pervasive developmental disorder of the brain that becomes evident in early childhood. A specific dysfunction in neuronal circuits has been identified, by Professors Peter Scheiffele and Kaspar Vogt at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel, that results from autism. The researchers also discovered a way to reverse these neuronal changes. They believe that their findings, published in the journal Science, will have a great effect in drug development for treating autism...