There are growing concerns over the effects of increased consumption of sodas and fruit drinks among adolescents in the United States. A study in the February issue of The Journal of Pediatrics examines this trend among black and white girls over a ten year period.
Ruth Striegel-Moore, Ph.D., and colleagues from several institutions studied three-day food diaries kept by 2,371 girls who participated in the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Growth Health Study. The food
As the prism of our senses, the human brain has ways of refracting sensory input in defiance of reality.
This is seen, for example, in the placebo effect, when simple sugar pills or inert salves taken by unwitting subjects are seen to ease pain or have some other beneficial physiological effect. How the brain processes this faked input and prompts the body to respond is largely a mystery of neuroscience.
Now, however, scientists have begun to peel back some of the neuro
A new review of studies supports the government’s opinion that too little evidence exists to support a device that uses balloon-like pants as a treatment for heart failure.
External counterpulsation (ECP), a noninvasive therapy to improve blood flow to the heart, is most commonly used to relieve hard-to-treat chest pain for heart patients who are not candidates for surgery.
Last year, the equipment manufacturer asked the federal government to expand its coverage o
There is little doubt that alcohol-related disorders in humans are genetically based. The influence of environmental factors, however, remains unclear. Given that studies of humans are complicated by a multitude of cultural and day-to-day-living factors, researchers in the March issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research use rhesus monkeys to examine genetic and environmental influences on alcohol consumption. Results indicate that, just as with humans, both genetic and environmental
Most participants in GAIT study saw little relief
The popular dietary supplements glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate proved no better than a placebo in relieving osteoarthritis knee pain in most participants of a major national trial. But the study, published in the Feb. 23 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, also showed a smaller subgroup of trial patients with moderate to severe osteoarthritis knee pain taking the combination of the two supplements experienced signifi
Where we look often reveals our interests and intentions. Consequently, we often look toward others and follow their gaze to the objects to which they give visual attention. Like humans, monkeys pay attention to the eyes of individuals within their groups; in the laboratory, they respond more quickly to a target when they have seen another individual look at it. Researchers at Duke University Medical Center now demonstrate that social status strongly determines how monkeys deploy their atten
If women want the best possible service at a clothing store, they had better be looking fashionable and well-groomed before they hit the mall.
A new study found that well-dressed and groomed women received the friendliest and, in some cases, fastest service from salesclerks.
Researchers secretly observed interactions between customers and salesclerks at three large-sized women’s clothing stores, timing how long clerks took to greet customers, and rating the clerks&
To provide essential data for the rebuilding of the ravaged levees in New Orleans, engineers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will be studying small-scale models of sections of the flood-protection system. The researchers will replicate conditions during Hurricane Katrina by subjecting the models to flood loads, supplying important information to help the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers prepare the city for next hurricane season and beyond.
The researchers will build and test models of t
Heart health risk factors and lifestyle choices, such as exercise, learning new things and staying socially connected, are associated with maintaining brain health as we age according to a new report from a multi-Institute collaboration of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) published online today in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.
“Many of the factors that can put our brain health at risk are things we can modify and control,” said Wi
In an important study forthcoming in the March 2006 issue of the American Naturalist, biologists from Yale University, University of Florida, and Dartmouth University explore the dynamics of pathogen survival and shed new light on a longstanding mystery: why some infectious diseases are limited to small outbreaks and others become full-blown epidemics.
“The capacity of a virus to propagate upon a novel host apparently is conditional on the recent experience of preceding generat
A study by Israeli and American researchers, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, says that reducing speed limits and extensive use of speed camera networks could significantly reduce the high number of road deaths in the United States.
The study was headed by Prof. Elihu Richter of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and was jointly undertaken by a team from the Injury Prevention Center at the Braun Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Comm
Protective kelp forests found near many early coastal archaeological sites
If humans migrated from Asia to the Americas along Pacific Rim coastlines near the end of the Pleistocene era, kelp forests may have aided their journey, according to research presented today at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting.
Until recently, the “coastal migration theory” was not accorded much importance by most scholars. However, new discoveries ha
A study of 68 randomly selected weblogs produced by teenagers aged 13 to 17 finds that teen bloggers often willingly reveal their actual names, age and offline locations, putting them at risk for cyberstalking and cyberbullying.
David Huffaker, a Northwestern University researcher working in the technology and social behavior program with Northwestern Professor Justine Cassell, will present his study findings within the context of other studies of teenage Internet behavior a
A quarter of all people with MRSA in Sweden between 2000 and 2003 were infected abroad. A study published today in the open access journal BMC Infectious Diseases reveals that the number of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections in Sweden nearly doubled between 2000 and 2003. The study also shows that 25% of all cases came from abroad. This highlights the threat posed by international transmission of MRSA to countries in which incidence of MRSA infection is still relatively lo
Variations in a number of different genes and environmental factors affect an individual’s risk for osteoporosis. Several gene variants have been linked to osteoporosis, but few have stood the test of time. The GENOMOS study, a large European collaboration led by Andre Uitterlinden (Erasmus University Medical Center), John Ioannidis (University of Ioannina), and Stuart Ralston (University of Edinburgh), now shows that a top candidate gene plays a role in osteoporosis, but with effects that
A small study suggests that chewing gum after colon surgery may speed the return of normal bowel function and shorten patients’ hospital stays, according to a report in the February issue of Archives of Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Any type of abdominal surgery can cause ileus, a marked decrease or stoppage of intestinal function, according to background information in the article. Pain, vomiting and abdominal distension are the immediate consequences. Ileus also c
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