Culture
People with epilepsy living in high crime neighborhoods in Chicago had three times as many seizures as those living in neighborhoods with lower crime rates according to new research from the University of Illinois at Chicago presented at the American Epilepsy Society 2018 conference in New Orleans.
CINCINNATI - A daily hydroxyurea pill may finally bring some relief for young children living with the painful and deadly blood disease sickle cell anemia (SCA) in resource-challenged sub-Saharan Africa, where the disease is prevalent and health care availability is suboptimal.
Breast cancer survivors who used a smartphone app created at Houston Methodist consistently lost weight, largely due to daily, real-time interactions with their health care team via the mobile app. Few clinically-tested mobile apps exist today with clear measurable goals to support continued care of cancer survivors and patients.
A study recently published in Translational Psychiatry, a Nature journal, has shown how using cultured cells from patients with psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia, to investigate abnormalities in nerve connections in the brain could lead to new treatments. Strong correlations were observed between the findings in the cells in culture--grown outside the body in a controlled environment--and findings from brain imaging performed on the very same human participants.
Heart attacks reoccurred more frequently in younger patients with several modifiable risk factors, including smoking and high blood pressure. Researchers on the new study, presented at the American College of Cardiology Asia Conference 2018 in Shanghai, suggested secondary preventive programs for younger patients should target modifiable risk factors.
African-American children often are reported by parents and teachers to display behaviors of ADHD at a higher rate than children from other racial and ethnic groups. For the first time, researchers have found that African-American mothers in a study rated boys as displaying more frequent ADHD symptoms than Caucasian mothers did, regardless of child race.
The English idiom "highbrow," derived from a physical description of a skull barely able to contain the brain inside of it, comes from a long-held belief in the existence of a link between brain size and intelligence.
For more than 200 years, scientists have looked for such an association. Begun using rough measures, such as estimated skull volume or head circumference, the investigation became more sophisticated in the last few decades when MRIs offered a highly accurate accounting of brain volume.
MANHATTAN, KANSAS -- Along with a warming climate and intensified human activities, recent water storage in global landlocked basins has undergone a widespread decline. A new study reveals this decline has aggravated local water stress and caused potential sea level rise.
The study, "Recent Global Decline in Endorheic Basin Water Storage," was carried out by a team of scientists from six countries and appears in the current issue of Nature Geoscience.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Preclinical experiments by University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers suggest the cancer drugs vorinostat, belinostat and panobinostat might be repurposed to treat infections caused by human papillomaviruses, or HPVs.
Despite an uptick in anti-vaccine legislation proposed by state lawmakers in recent years, pro-vaccine bills were more likely to be enacted into law, according to a new study by researchers at Drexel University. The results were published this week in the American Journal of Public Health.
FINDINGS
Opioid use in Mexico has been low, but national and international factors are converging and a threat of increased drug and addiction rates exists. Many of these factors may have originated in the U.S., making this a potential joint U.S.-Mexico epidemic.
BACKGROUND
MADISON - A new, low-cost wound dressing developed by University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers could dramatically speed up healing in a surprising way.
The method leverages energy generated from a patient's own body motions to apply gentle electrical pulses at the site of an injury.
In rodent tests, the dressings reduced healing times to a mere three days compared to nearly two weeks for the normal healing process.
Reef fisheries can continue to provide food and income despite corals being lost to climate change, according to new research conducted in the Seychelles.
The unexpected results of a 20-year study into reef fisheries published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution this week showed fisheries being maintained despite extreme coral bleaching. Remarkably, rapid proliferation of fishes with low dependence on corals led to catches remaining stable or even increasing.
But the results also showed fishing success was 'patchy' and more dependent on fewer species.
IIASA researchers have contributed to a major new report in The Lancet medical journal looking at the effects of climate change on human health, and the implications for society.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- About 56 million years ago, on an Earth so warm that palm trees graced the Arctic Circle, a mouse-sized primate known as Teilhardina first curled its fingers around a branch.
The earliest-known ancestor of modern primates, Teilhardina's close relatives would eventually give rise to today's monkeys, apes and humans. But one of the persistent mysteries about this distant cousin of ours is where it originated.