Both fathers and mothers have distressing thoughts after the birth of a baby, according to a new Mayo Clinic study published in the Sept. 3 issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings.
In a survey mailed to 300 childbearing women and their partners, participants were asked to report distressing thoughts, such as “My baby is going to die from SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome)” or “What if I drown my baby while bathing her?” Overall, seven categories of thoughts were st
An engineered mouse, already known to be immune to the weight gain ramifications of a high-calorie, high-fat diet, now seems able to resist the onset of diabetes.
The mouse, stripped of a gene known as SCD-1, is apparently impervious to the negative effects of the type of diet that, for many people, has significant health and social consequences.
“We think this animal model may be protected against diabetes,” says James Ntambi, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of bioche
A new technique to detect localised corrosion in steel and other metals could help industry avoid major repair bills. In some cases, it could even help prevent serious safety problems in industrial plants and other building structures.
This technique differs from traditional methods as it is able to detect corrosion on a much smaller level. This means that preventative action can be taken earlier, saving money, time and possibly lives.
Funded by the Swindon-based Engineering and Ph
Widespread crime and the rise of global terrorism have meant that security systems need to incorporate sophisticated and rapid computer recognition of human faces, as delegates will hear next week at the British Machine Vision Conference being held at the University of East Anglia (UEA).
Another side of the same coin is in making human faces that appear on computers as convincing as possible, and in particular making speech appear realistic, as a team of UEA researchers will tell the confere
Evolution Robotics ER Vision™ Software to be licensed by Entertainment Robot Company – ERC – a Division of Sony Corporation
Evolution Robotics™ Inc., a leading provider of state-of-the-art robotics solutions, today announced a technology licensing agreement with Entertainment Robot Company – ERC – a division of Sony Corporation (NYSE:SNE). Evolution Robotics will work closely with Sony ERC to optimize ER Vision™ for use in future Sony ERC products.
Sony chose to work with Ev
New statistical research carried out by a team of experts at the University of Southampton suggests that the number of people dying as a result of diabetes may be directly influenced by ‘male macho attitudes’.
Professors Robert Peveler and Colin Pritchard of the Mental Health research unit at the University’s School of Medicine found that during the period studied (1974-1997) while the numbers of youth and young adults dying from diabetes fell, there was still a disproportionately higher de
Recoverying from third and fourth degree burns, the most damaging types, is a slow and painful process that inevitably leaves excessive scar tissue. Russian researchers have developed a pharmacological enzyme preparation to accelerate the debridement process and wound healing, which reduces the preparation time for grafting and diminishes scarring.
Their product, called ENZYCOL, is a mixture of collagenases from the Kamchatka crab that rapidly dissolves the dense collagen matrix of necrot
The use of antibiotics in animal feeds may soon be banned in the European Union. Despite positive effects on pig health and growth, there are growing concerns about bacterial resistance to antibiotics. This includes the risk of cross-resistance, with bacteria developing resistance to antibiotics used in human medicine.
In response to these concerns EUREKA project ANTIBIOTICS IN FEED has developed safe and healthy piglet feeds which are free from antibiotics. Crucially the new feeds can be qu
Staying healthy may involve more than washing hands or keeping a positive attitude. According to a new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, it also may involve a particular pattern of brain activity.
By monitoring activity levels in the human brain’s prefrontal cortex, the researchers demonstrate for the first time that people who have more activity in the left side of this area also have a stronger immune response against disease. The findings, soon to be published i
ESC Congress 2003
Heart attack and the resulting heart failure is still one of the leading causes of death in the western world. Therefore, new theraepeutical approaches to restore damaged heart tissue are indispensable. Prof. Hescheler’s research group has been working with murine embryonic stem cells for over 14 years now and was the first group worldwide to obviously measure physiological functions on embryonic stem cells.
Recently his group demonstrated that cardiac prec
ESC Congress 2003
Adult heart cells have limited regenerative capacity and therefore any significant cell loss, such as occurs during a heart attack, is mostly irreversible and may lead to the development of progressive heart failure. Congestive heart failure is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the western world, placing a significant economic burden on the health care systems. Despite advances in the medical, interventional, and surgical therapeutic measures, t
ESC Congress 2003: Stem cells – A tool for mending broken hearts?
We have shown that stem cell injections by catheters into diseased hearts are feasible and safe, even for very sick patients. Moreover, the results suggested strongly a potential ability of these cells to regenerate the arteries of the heart (called coronary arteries), and this regeneration improved the mechanical function of the heart, improving the heart failure condition of these patients. Since heart failure is a mo
ESC Congress 2003: Picture Perfect – Progress in non-invasive imaging
There has been increasing awareness of the importance of composition of athero-thrombotic plaque as a major risk factor for acute coronary syndromes. Several invasive and noninvasive imaging techniques are available to assess athero-thrombotic vessels.
Most of the standard techniques identify luminal diameter or stenosis, wall thickness, or plaque volume (such as multi-slice CT, angiography, IVUS, etc.); h
On October 13, 2003 the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) will launch a new bioinformatics support network that is tailor-made for small companies.
It can be a lonely business being a bioinformatician in a small company. It is widely acknowledged that Europe’’s economic development is becoming increasingly dependent on small-to-medium enterprises, or SMEs (enterprises with fewer than 250 employees and an annual turnover not exceeding 50 million Euros or an annual bala
The oldest ecological experiment in the world, set up almost 150 years ago to see whether inorganic fertilisers could produce more grass than traditional animal manures, is becoming an important source of evidence on the impact of climate change on genetic variation in plants.
Speaking at the British Ecological Society’s Annual Meeting, being held at Manchester Metropolitan University on 9-11 September 2003, Professor Jonathan Silvertown of the Open University will explain what the Park Gra
Ecologists are taking to the trees in a bid to unravel the ecology of shell coiling in snails. Speaking at the British Ecological Society’s Annual Meeting, being held at Manchester Metropolitan University on 9-11 September 2003, Dr Paul Craze of the University of Plymouth will explain how examining the proportion of right- and left-coiling individuals in a species of Bornean tree snail could help ecologists understand how new species arise.
The vast majority of snail species are almost exclu
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