As attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) affects around 1 in every 25 school-aged children, managing this condition is of huge social importance. An article published in BMC Psychiatry this week shows that zinc supplements could increase the effectiveness of stimulants used to treat children with the disease. The effects of ADHD on individual children differ, but symptoms include inattention, hyperactivity and impulsiveness. Stimulants are the most common treatment prescribed, but
Forensic technique can be used for biological field studies A method used by forensic experts to collect evidence from crime scenes could soon be taken up by biologists studying animals in the wild. An article in BMC Ecology this week describes how DNA from animal blood and tissue samples can be stored on record cards made from specialist filter paper and used in experiments at a later date. “Techniques involving the analysis of DNA have become ubiquitous in many areas of wil
Fly-by-wire control systems are well established in the aerospace industry. Now participants in one IST project, PEIT, have ambitious plans to introduce the same capabilities to road vehicles. The objective? Potentially reducing road accidents within the EU by half!
“We know that 98 per cent of vehicle accidents are caused by driver error,” says project leader Ansgar Maisch of DaimlerChrysler, “so giving the driver a virtual assistant able to correct mistakes has the potential to reduce the
Several mammal species other than ruminants and camels have a multi-chambered forestomach – kangaroos, hippos, colobus monkeys, peccaries, sloths – but they do not ruminate.
As studies on the digestive physiology of these species are largely missing, it is generally assumed that their forestomach functions in the same way as that of ruminants, the most prominent characteristic of which is the selective retention of larger particles. However, retaining larger particles (which are more
’A genomic approach to the identification of genetic and environmental components underlying the quality of the grape’. This is the title of the R+D project financed by Genoma España in which the Department of Vegetable Physiology of the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Navarre is participating.
Over the next three years the Fundación Genoma España will provide two million euros to identify the genes responsible for the quality of grapes. Six research teams are working on a dessert
The hunt for space rocks on a collision course with Earth has so far been pretty much limited to the Northern Hemisphere. But last week astronomers took the search for Earth-threatening asteroids to southern skies. Astronomers using a refurbished telescope at the Australian National University’s Siding Spring Observatory discovered their first two near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) on March 29. NEAs are asteroids that pass near the Earth and may pose a threat of collision. Si
A comparison of various guidelines and strategies for treatment of sore throat provides information that may help optimize use of diagnostic tests and reduce unnecessary use of antibiotics, according to a study in the April 7 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
According to background information in the article, recent guidelines for management of a sore throat (pharyngitis) vary in their recommendations concerning antibiotic treatment and the need for laboratory
Exploring for oil and extracting it from the Amazon region of northeastern Ecuador has boosted the country’s income over the last several decades, but it has also resulted in a “public health emergency” due to the negative effects on the local environment and on the health of persons who live in the petroleum-production areas. That is according to an English-language article published in the most recent (March 2004) issue of the “Revista Panamericana de Salud Pública/Pan American Journal of Publ
Women who receive the results of their screening mammograms immediately after their examination have less stress and anxiety compared with women who have to wait several days for their test results, according to a study in the April 7 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Surprisingly, however, an educational intervention that taught skills to cope with anxiety was not associated with decreased anxiety among a similar group of women.
In the United States, 5% to 11% of all s
Research aids drug design; sheds light on plague and other diseases
A new technique for engineering protein crystals is helping scientists figure out the three-dimensional structures of some important biological molecules, including a key plague protein whose structure has eluded researchers until now. The technique, developed with support from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), promises to help pharmaceutical compani
Researchers are probing details of how HIV commandeers genes in infected cells to disguise itself from the immune system. The researchers, from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, have identified cellular proteins expressed during HIV infection that enable HIV-infected cells to avoid apoptosis, a common cell suicide event. This survival mechanism allows the virus to maintain the infection within the compromised cells.
These findings, as yet based on studies in cells, not in patien
In ancient maps of the world, expanses of unknown territory might hold a warning to would-be explorers: Here there be monsters. For today’s explorers seeking to navigate and understand the world of science, the monsters are the untamed collections of data that inhabit a largely uncharted landscape.
The April 6, 2004, issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) features nearly 20 articles by some of tomorrow’s mapmakers. Representing the computer, information and cog
Sexually active teenage girls who viewed an interactive sex education DVD created by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University were more likely to become abstinent than girls who did not see the DVD, according to a study of 300 adolescent girls in the Pittsburgh area. The study will be published this fall in the journal “Social Science and Medicine.”
The DVD, “What Could You Do?” portrays teenage girls in situations that typically lead to sex and allows the viewer to choose what actions the
A novel gene therapy that responds specifically to oxygen-starved heart muscle may protect against further injury following a heart attack, a study by University of South Florida cardiovascular researchers found.
Their findings are reported in the April 2004 issue of the journal Hypertension.
M. Ian Phillips, PhD, DSc, and his team at the USF College of Medicine and All Children’s Hospital Research Institute designed a kind of oxygen-sensitive biosensor that turns on protecti
So-called “exercise hypertension,” an abnormally high spike in blood pressure experienced by generally healthy people during a workout, is a known risk factor for permanent and serious high blood pressure at rest. But who gets it, and why, has been largely unknown.
Now, Johns Hopkins scientists say they have reason to believe that the problem is rooted in the failure of cells that line the blood vessels to allow the arteries to expand to accommodate increased blood flow during exertion.
Scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign studying vaccinia virus, a close relative of smallpox, have determined that a gene necessary for virus replication also has a key role in turning off inflammation, a crucial anti-viral immune response of host cells.
The discovery, reported this month in the Journal of Virology, potentially broadens the knowledge base of how all poxviruses cause disease and how they may be outwitted by improvements in vaccines against them, said Joa
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