Health & WellnessS


Gear

Anti-Smoking Propaganda! 'Third-hand smoke' is the contamination that remains after smoke is gone

Riham Feshir
Park Rapids Enterprise
Wed, 21 Jan 2009 04:51 UTC
Ever sniffed a smoker's coat, hair or car and felt the toxic air down your lungs?

That's "third-hand" smoke.

A new study conducted by a team of medical researchers and published in the journal Pediatrics, reports there is no safe level of exposure to tobacco, even its invisible toxins.

Comment: Don't worry about the mercury in vaccines. Don't worry about the toxins in what they want us to call food. Don't worry about the poisons in our water, soft drinks, and the list goes on.

Blame the smokers.

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Evil Rays

Bill Gates, others pledge $630 million to beat polio

Will Dunham
Reuters
Thu, 22 Jan 2009 04:47 UTC
Washington - An infusion of more than $630 million spearheaded by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is intended to help finish the job of eradicating the crippling disease polio, officials said on Wednesday.

The Seattle-based Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rotary International charity joined with the governments of Britain and Germany to commit the money over the next five years to support child immunization.

An international effort has cut polio cases by 99 percent in 10 years -- a drop from more than 350,000 cases in 1998 to about 1,600 in 2008.
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Bulb

Popular Songs Can Cue Specific Memories, Psychology Research Shows


PhysOrg
Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:36 UTC
Whether the soundtrack of your youth was doo-wop or disco, new wave or Nirvana, psychology research at Kansas State University shows that even just thinking about a particular song can evoke vivid memories of the past.

"We thought that actually hearing the song would bring back the most vivid memories," said Richard Harris, professor of psychology at K-State. "But in our study there wasn't a lot of difference in memory between those who heard the song and those who didn't. What we determined was happening is that you already know the song and you're hearing it in your mind."

Harris and Elizabeth Cady, a 2006 K-State doctoral graduate in psychology, recently published a study of music as a memory cue in the journal Psychology of Music. J. Bret Knappenberger, a 2004 K-State bachelor's graduate in psychology, also was co-author.

Harris said the study fit his other research on the intersection of media and memory. In another project, Harris explored why people like to quote movies. He said the project with Cady was one of the first times his research delved into the medium of music.
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Heart

Inflammation Contributes to Colon Cancer


PhysOrg
Wed, 21 Jan 2009 17:51 UTC
Researchers led by Drs. Lillian Maggio-Price and Brian Iritani at The University of Washington found that mice that lack the immune inhibitory molecule Smad3 are acutely sensitive to both bacterially-induced inflammation and cancer. They report these findings in the January 2009 issue of The American Journal of Pathology.

Bacteria contribute to the development of certain cancers, in some measure, by stimulating chronic inflammation. Absence of a molecule that inhibits inflammation, Smad3, may therefore increase susceptibility to colon cancer.

To examine whether Smad3 signaling contributes to development of colon cancer, Maggio-Price et al examined mice deficient in Smad3 that lack of adaptive immune responses. They found that these mice are acutely sensitive to bacterially-induced inflammation and cancer due to both deficient T regulatory cell function and increased expression of proinflammatory cytokines. Through increased expression of both pro-oncogenic and anti-apoptotic proteins, epithelial cells in colonic tissues underwent both enhanced proliferation and survival.
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Info

Study: Excessive Use of Antiviral Drugs Could Aid Deadly Flu


Research News
Wed, 21 Jan 2009 04:35 UTC
Influenza's ability to resist the effects of cheap and popular antiviral agents in Asia and Russia should serve as a cautionary tale about U.S. plans to use the antiviral Tamiflu in the event of widespread avian flu infection in humans, scientists say.

Researchers analyzed almost 700 genome sequences of avian influenza strains to document where and when the virus developed resistance to a class of antiviral drugs called adamantanes and how far resistant strains spread. The analysis suggests that widespread antiviral drug use can accelerate the evolution of drug resistance in viruses, and that resistant strains can emerge and spread rapidly.

The results should serve as a warning to those who consider Tamiflu the next great antiviral medication, the researchers say. Stockpiling Tamiflu has become a standard part of many government, business and health organization plans to prepare for a long-feared pandemic flu outbreak, especially in the event that avian flu mutates enough to infect and be easily transmitted among humans.
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Pocket Knife

Forget Pot Smokers; What Does It Take to Lock Up Drug Company Execs?

Bruce E. Levine
AlterNet
Fri, 16 Jan 2009 23:50 UTC
"Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through." - Jonathan Swift

After reading "The Neurontin Legacy -- Marketing through Misinformation and Manipulation" in the January 8, 2009 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, one may conclude that (1) America's prisons would be put to better use incarcerating drug company executives instead of pot smokers, and (2) society may need a return of public scorn via the pillory for those doctors who are essentially drug-company shills.
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Smiley

Flashback What Happy People Don't Do

Roni Caryn Rabin
The New York Times
Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:47 UTC
Happy people spend a lot of time socializing, going to church and reading newspapers - but they don't spend a lot of time watching television, a new study finds.

That's what unhappy people do.

Although people who describe themselves as happy enjoy watching television, it turns out to be the single activity they engage in less often than unhappy people, said John Robinson, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland and the author of the study, which appeared in the journal Social Indicators Research.
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People

Our Faces, Not Just Our Ears, 'Hear' Speech


PhysOrg
Tue, 20 Jan 2009 20:24 UTC
A McGill-led study has found that the perception of speech sounds is modified by stretching facial skin in different directions. Different patterns of skin stretch affect how subjects perceive different words.

Researchers used a robotic device to manipulate the facial skin in ways that would normally be experienced when we speak. They found that stretching the skin while subjects simply listen to words alters the sounds they hear.

In an article published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), McGill neuroscientist David Ostry of the Department of Psychology, reports his results testing a group of 75 native speakers of American English.
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Magnify

Research Breakthrough Targets Genetic Diseases


PhysOrg
Tue, 20 Jan 2009 13:34 UTC
A cure for debilitating genetic diseases such as Huntington's disease, Friedreich's ataxia and Fragile X syndrome is a step closer to reality, thanks to a recent scientific breakthrough.

The finding, which was published in Science on January 15, is the result of a collaboration between a team led by Dr Sureshkumar Balasubramanian at The University of Queensland's School of Biological Sciences and Professor Dr Detlef Weigel at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Germany.

It identifies an expansion of a repeat pattern in the DNA of the plant Arabidopsis thaliana that has striking parallels to the DNA repeat patterns observed in humans suffering from neuronal disorders such as Huntington's disease and Fredereich's ataxia.
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Magnify

So Could Terry Pratchett's Sci-fi Helmet Really Halt Alzheimer's?

Jo Macfarlane
Daily Mail
Sun, 18 Jan 2009 17:00 UTC
Pratchett
© UnknownHigh-tech: Sir Terry Pratchett in the infrared helmet shaped for him from a cast of his head.
Bestselling author Sir Terry Pratchett has been testing out a revolutionary helmet which is claimed to slow down or even reverse the effects of Alzheimer's disease.

Science fiction writer Sir Terry, 60, who was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's in 2007, wore the strange-looking headgear once a day for three months and noticed a small improvement, his agent confirmed.

The prototype anti-dementia helmet, which must be worn for ten minutes each day, was designed by British GP Dr Gordon Dougal.

It works by directing intense bursts of infrared light into the brain to stimulate the growth of brain cells.
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