Health News

How marriage affects bone health

Date: Jan-23-2014
Marriage is good for the health of men's bones - but only if they marry when they're 25 or older, new UCLA researcher suggests.In a study published online in the peer-reviewed journal Osteoporosis International, researchers found evidence that men who married when they were younger than 25 had lower bone strength than men who married for the first time at a later age.In addition, men in stable marriages or marriage-like relationships who had never previously divorced or separated had greater bone strength than men whose previous marriages had fractured, the researchers said.

Update on evidence-based practices for children and youth with autism

Date: Jan-23-2014
The National Professional Development Center on Autism Spectrum Disorders has released its much-anticipated update on evidence-based practices for children and youth with autism. Scientists at UNC's Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute spearheaded the project, screening 29,000 articles about autism spectrum disorders (ASD) to locate the soundest research on interventions for children from birth to age 22."More children than ever are being diagnosed with autism," said FPG director Samuel L. Odom, who co-headed the new review.

Disclosure leads to avoidance of conflicts of interest

Date: Jan-23-2014
Professionals, such as doctors, lawyers and financial advisers, face conflicts of interest (COIs) when they have a personal, and often financial, interest in giving biased advice. Therefore, requiring COI disclosure has become a popular way to try and protect consumers from biased advice, but previous research has shown that mandatory disclosures have little impact on advice recipients, and may even lead advisers to give more biased advice. However, virtually all of the prior studies questioned the effectiveness of COI disclosures that advisers were unable to avoid.

66 children a day treated in emergency departments for shopping cart-related injuries

Date: Jan-23-2014
Although a voluntary shopping cart safety standard was implemented in the United States in 2004, the overall number and rate of injuries to children associated with shopping carts have not decreased. In fact, the number and rate of concussions/closed head injuries have continued to climb, according to a new study.The study, conducted by researchers in the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital, examined data relating to children younger than 15 years of age who were treated in U.S.

Effective physical activity whilst sitting using small elliptical exercise device

Date: Jan-23-2014
People may be able to keep the weight off by using a compact elliptical device while sitting at a desk or watching TV, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers."Adults in the United States spend more than 11 hours per day sitting while doing things like watching television and working on a computer," said Liza Rovniak, assistant professor of medicine and public health sciences. "Evidence suggests that this sedentary lifestyle has contributed to average weight gains of one to two pounds per year among U.S. adults over the last 20 years.

Highly sensitive tactile sensors (e-whiskers) for robotics and other applications

Date: Jan-23-2014
From the world of nanotechnology we've gotten electronic skin, or e-skin, and electronic eye implants or e-eyes. Now we're on the verge of electronic whiskers. Researchers with Berkeley Lab and the University of California (UC) Berkeley have created tactile sensors from composite films of carbon nanotubes and silver nanoparticles similar to the highly sensitive whiskers of cats and rats. These new e-whiskers respond to pressure as slight as a single Pascal, about the pressure exerted on a table surface by a dollar bill.

Software uses big data to battle forgetting with personalized content review

Date: Jan-23-2014
Computer software similar to that used by online retailers to recommend products to a shopper can help students remember the content they've studied, according to a new study by the University of Colorado Boulder.The software, created by computer scientists at CU-Boulder's Institute for Cognitive Science, works by tapping a database of past student performance to suggest what material an individual student most needs to review.

Acute myeloid leukemia may be initiated by single mutation in bone cells

Date: Jan-23-2014
Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a blood cancer, but for many patients the cancer may originate from an unusual source: a mutation in their bone cells.In a study published in the online edition of Nature, researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) found that a mutation in the bone cells called osteoblasts, which build new bone, causes AML in mice. The mutation was found in nearly 40 percent of patients with AML or myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a precursor condition, who were examined as part of the study.

Reducing the number of home-plate collisions in professional baseball

Date: Jan-23-2014
Tag plays at home plate have the highest injury rate in professional baseball, occurring 4.3 times more often than other base-running plays, according to researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center."The current Major League Baseball (MLB) rules have a loophole that allows catchers to stand in the baseline and block the plate if the ball is being thrown home, which allows for collisions," said Daryl Rosenbaum, M.D., sports medicine physician at Wake Forest Baptist and lead author of the study.

Reducing liver protein SIRT1 levels to reduce risk of fatty liver disease and obesity

Date: Jan-23-2014
A new study led by Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) demonstrates that the abnormal metabolism linked to obesity could be regulated in part by the interaction of two metabolic regulators, called the NAD-dependent deacetylase SIRT1 and fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21). Using experimental models, the researchers found that a lack of SIRT1 protein in the liver led to lower levels of a liver secreted protein FGF21, which resulted in an increased likelihood of developing fatty liver disease and obesity.