Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health analyzed how airborne particulate matter from forest fires in the Canadian providence of Quebec traveled more than 700 miles to homes in Baltimore, Md. The study authors found a dramatic increase in outdoor and indoor fine particulate matter – an atmospheric pollutant that is harmful to people with respiratory diseases– in Baltimore during the first weekend of July 2002, which coincided with several forest fires in Quebec. The

For Marcel Proust, the taste of a madeleine conjured remembrance of the distant past. In today’s multi-tasking, hyper-speed world, it can be a trick to remember what we did yesterday.

But a new method of reconstructing the previous day’s activities not only helps people remember how they spent their time, it also captures how they really felt about their activities. The technique, described in the Dec. 3 issue of Science, provides insight into what people actually enj

The University of Surrey was pleased to host the seminar ‘The Older Workforce: an untapped resource’ yesterday evening. The seminar, supported by the Centre for Research into the Older Workforce (CROW) at UniS and The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), examined both business and individual attitudes to older workers.

In all industrialised countries the population is ageing and we have more people retired than ever before, while the workforce is shrinking. This

A recent study of 43 garden crops led by a University of Texas at Austin biochemist suggests that their nutrient value has declined in recent decades while farmers have been planting crops designed to improve other traits.

The study was designed to investigate the effects of modern agricultural methods on the nutrient content of foods. The researchers chose garden crops, mostly vegetables, but also melons and strawberries, for which nutritional data were available from both 1950

A new study on early steroid withdrawal following liver transplantation found that there was a higher incidence of rejection and a lower incidence of glucose intolerance necessitating treatment for diabetes. It was the first double-blind placebo-controlled study to examine the effects of early steroid elimination.

The results of this study appear in the December 2004 issue of Liver Transplantation, the official journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (

Organ damage that goes beyond the liver due to alcoholism is often seen as a barrier to liver transplantation, despite a lack of data on how a transplant affects these complications. A new study describes a patient with alcoholic liver disease complicated by peripheral neuropathy (nerve damage affecting the arms and legs) who underwent a liver transplant and regained almost normal muscle strength.

The results of this study appear in the December 2004 issue of Liver Transplantation,

A team of researchers have discovered that high levels of discrimination could lead to an increase in mental health problems among gay men, lesbians and bi-sexual men and women.

In a report published today in the British Journal of Psychiatry, the team from Imperial College London, University College London and the University of Brighton found that high levels of discrimination including physical attacks and bullying could be linked to high levels of mental disorder.

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The problem of bullying in schools is being tackled by a innovative computer software ‘drama’ developed with the help of 1.24 million euros from the Information Society Technologies (IST) area of the EU’s Framework Funding Programme.

The VICTEC project is aimed at children between the ages of eight to twelve and uses self-animating 3D characters to create improvised dramas in a virtual school. The viewer is then asked to help one of the characters to deal with the problems they ar

Contrary to the movie Jurassic Park, in which scientists recreate dinosaurs from ancient DNA, genetic material more than about 50 thousand years old cannot be reliably recovered. Nevertheless, a team of scientists has now demonstrated that computers could be used to reconstruct with 98 percent accuracy the DNA of a creature that lived at the time of the dinosaurs more than 75 million years ago–a small, furry nocturnal animal that was the common ancestor of all placental mammals, including human

Medical procedures such as iodine therapy, a popular thyroid treatment, can result in patients triggering radiation detectors for up to three months after treatment, according to a study presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

Diagnostic nuclear medicine procedures, including FDG PET scans, bone scans and cardiac scans, can have a similar effect, although for shorter periods. “The nuclear medicine community has been aware that p

As many as 28,000 patients die each year in the U.S. because of catheter-related bloodstream infections, but doctors and nurses who implement simple and inexpensive interventions can cut the number of deaths to nearly zero, according to a study by Johns Hopkins researchers.

“This type of improvement has never been demonstrated, but there is no reason that ICU’s across the country can’t implement these interventions to achieve similar results,” said Sean Berenholtz, M.D.

Study shows capacity exists to screen population within one year

More than 41 million Americans who are candidates for colorectal cancer screening have not been screened for this second-leading cancer killer, the first time the unscreened population has been quantified. According to a study published today in the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) journal Gastroenterology, sufficient capacity exists to screen the unscreened population within one year using fecal occult b

Panoramic dental x-rays can be used to help identify postmenopausal women with low skeletal bone mineral density (BMD), meaning that screening for spinal osteoporosis could begin in the dentist’s office a new study shows.

The study included 316 postmenopausal women who had no symptoms of osteoporosis. The women were divided into two groups: 159 had no history of hysterectomy, oophorectomy or estrogen use, the remaining 157 had one or more of these histories. All had panor

In laboratory studies at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, researchers have successfully treated the most common malignant abdominal tumor of childhood: neuroblastoma tumors. Researchers successfully treated the tumor in mouse models by administering a treatment based on a weakened version of the herpes simplex virus.

The study appears in the current online issue of Pediatric Blood and Cancer, the journal of the American Society of Pediatric Hematology/Oncolo

When people lie, they use different parts of their brains than when they tell the truth, and these brain changes can be measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), according to a study presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America. The results suggest that fMRI may one day prove a more accurate lie detector than the polygraph.

“There may be unique areas in the brain involved in deception that can be measured with fMRI,” said

Study is first to reveal hypogonadism as common complication of diabetes

Low testosterone production appears to be a common complication of type 2 diabetes in men, affecting 1 out of 3 diabetic patients, a new study has shown. Moreover, results of the investigation show that this condition, known clinically as hypogonadism, is caused not by a defect in the testes, where testosterone is produced, but by improper functioning of the pituitary gland, which controls production of tes