|
Insurance & Litigation
•
|
Tools & Information
•
•
•
|
|
 Back to Eurekalert Medical and Health News Archives
Eurekalert Medical and Health News: 02-10-2005
Secret romantic relationships are hot, right? Movies and television dramas are full of them, and they almost always seem intense, the gateway to a new life filled with promise if not outright ecstasy. If you believe that, two psychologists who are about to publish research on the subject have a word of advice for you on Valentine's Day: Get a life.
A sensing element tailored for mass production of cheap, highly sensitive nerve-gas detectors has been developed by a research group led by a mechanical engineer at The University of Texas at Austin. The new sensor technology, which includes a single nano-crystal of tin oxide, microfabricated heating elements and other features, could potentially detect a single molecule of sarin or other nerve gases, and be immediatley ready to sense new biowarfare agents.
Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that people who regularly drink alcohol are three times as likely to die from injury as are non-drinkers and former drinkers.
Checking on Alzheimer's patients miles away is now as close as a simple satellite linkup.Doctors in UT Southwestern Medical Center's Alzheimer's Disease Center are using telemedicine for follow-up appointments with patients in the Choctaw Nation, an American Indian population in southeastern Oklahoma. The Alzheimer's Disease Center is the only one in the country studying the clinical and scientific aspects of dementia in the American Indians.
A Biomedical Engineering and Science Research Showcase on March 4 at the Bethesda Marriott, sponsored by the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engineering and Science, will offer sessions ranging from biomechanics to drug discovery presented by scientists from 11 institutions and agencies.
Researchers from the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) at the Free University of Brussels have recently published results that show promise in the quest for a new remedy for chronic urinary tract infections. The researchers have shown that administration of the sugar Heptyl-.-D-mannoside can prevent E. coli bacteria from binding to the wall of the urinary tract − which is the first step in the development of the infection.
Research conducted in nonhuman primates shows male nonhuman primates are more susceptible to age-related cognitive decline. Researchers say the finding has implications for developing sex-specific therapies to help humans guard against age-related memory loss.
Researchers have successfully used metabolomic profiling of the amniotic fluid to identify which women who have had preterm labor are at risk for a premature baby.
Despite what able-bodied healthy people might think, people with severe illnesses and disabilities don't wallow in misery and self-pity all the time. In fact, a new study finds, such patients may be just as happy as those without major medical conditions.
The amount of mouse allergen found in the air in many inner-city homes could be high enough to trigger asthma symptoms in the children who live there, say researchers at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center. Their study, published in the February issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, found more than a quarter of inner-city homes sampled had airborne allergen levels already known to aggravate asthma symptoms in animal research lab workers with mouse allergy.
A first-of-its-kind application of a novel statistical method of analysis to African Americans has identified regions on chromosomes 6 and 21 that likely harbor genes contributing to high blood pressure in that group. The novel statistical method, called admixture mapping, narrowed the search for genes related to hypertension, bringing researchers and doctors closer to finding more effective treatments.
A clinical trial of the experimental drug Revlimid has shown promise as an innovative way to treat patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a form of pre-leukemia.
That sought-after trait in a mate -- "good sense of humour" -- is more complex than originally thought. In fact, men and women define it differently. Eric Bressler, a graduate student at McMaster University who is studying the role of humour in personal attraction, discovered in a survey of 150 students that to a woman, "sense of humour" means someone who makes her laugh; to a man, it means someone who appreciates his jokes.
Forget a box of chocolates and a dozen roses. When it comes to attracting a mate, the male sagebrush cricket brings a special nuptial gift to his partner.During copulation, females chew off the ends of the males' fleshy hind wings and ingest fluid from the wounds they inflict.McMaster University psychologist Andrew Clark says, "Wing feeding keeps the female occupied during the time it takes the male to transfer the sperm."
A new study conducted by researchers at the universities of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, now shows protective equipment used in rugby union has only limited effectiveness in preventing injuries.
As President Bush released his proposed budget for fiscal year 2006, the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) has urged Congress and the Administration not to allow federal infectious disease programs that are vital to the nation's health to stagnate due to lack of funding.
NIH will investigate PCRM charges that OSU spinal injury course violates federal animal welfare regulations.
Millions of people at risk of becoming blind could one day be helped by an Oak Ridge National Laboratory technology originally intended to understand semiconductor defects.
Researchers at New York University have determined the location in the brain where involuntary attention enhances visual processing. The researchers, from NYU's Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science, found that attending to, or selectively processing information from a given location without directing our eyes to that location, enhances performance in visual tasks as well as the neural activity underlying the processing of ensuing images. The results are published in the latest issue of the journal Neuron.
Neurobiologists have found that a crucial learning circuit in the forebrain of finches enables them to improvise and change their song. A similar pathway in human brains may explain how children learn to talk and how adults learn and improve motor skills such as tennis.
Scientists investigating the link between PCBs, pesticides and Parkinson's disease have demonstrated new and intricate reactions that occur in certain brain cells, making them more vulnerable to injury after exposures. The group describes how PCBs disrupt dopamine neurons, and how low levels of the fungicide maneb can injure those cells.
Expanding HIV screening would be a relatively cost-effective way to increase life expectancy and decrease disease transmission. That is the conclusion of researchers at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System and Stanford University School of Medicine who conducted a cost-effectiveness analysis of doing routine HIV screening.
Steve Yanoviak tosses ants from very high places: tropical forest canopy trees. In the 10 February, 2005 issue of the journal, Nature, Yanoviak, ant biologist, Mike Kaspari, and biomechanics expert, Robert Dudley, publish an amazing observation: canopy ant workers (Cephalotes atratus L) jettisoned from branches 30 m above the ground, glide backwards to the trunk of the same tree with incredible accuracy. This is the first published account of directed gliding in wingless insects.
Despite a proliferation of gun registration requirements, bans on specific firearms and "zero tolerance" policies for guns in schools over the past three decades, the jury is still out on whether these laws help prevent gun violence, according to a new review of studies in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
College campuses provide a captive audience for cigarette-makers, but a new review of tobacco intervention studies suggests that universities are also effective sites for anti-smoking efforts.
|
|
