Culture
WASHINGTON (Aug. 23, 2018)--Social media bots and Russian trolls promoted discord and spread false information about vaccines on Twitter, according to new research led by the George Washington University. Using tactics similar to those at work during the 2016 United States presidential election, these Twitter accounts entered into vaccine debates months before election season was underway. The study, "Weaponized Health Communication: Twitter Bots and Russian Trolls Amplify the Vaccine Debate" was published today in the American Journal of Public Health.
DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke University researchers have developed a handheld probe that can image individual photoreceptors in the eyes of infants.
The technology, based on adaptive optics, will make it easier for physicians and scientists to observe these cells to diagnosis eye diseases and make early detection of brain-related diseases and trauma.
August 23, 2018 - Do you wish you could decrease your waistline? Reducing abdominal obesity can lower health risks - but despite claims you may have seen on the Internet, no trending diet can help you specifically eliminate belly fat, according to an article in
Take a look at your favorite mug; it probably looks the same as it always has, but your neurons may not think so. Neurons are firing in response to the visual stimuli they see but they don't fire in exactly the same way every time.
Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine wanted to know the significance of that variability and whether portions of that variability might be due to changes in an individual's focus of attention.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Parents who positively engage with their children during play time -- and gently steer them to clean up afterward -- may help toddlers with low-self regulation have lower body mass indexes (BMIs) later on as preschoolers.
In a study, researchers found that toddlers who had poor self-regulation skills -- the ability to control their behaviors and emotions -- went on to have lower BMIs as preschoolers if their mothers engaged with them during playtime and then helped direct them during clean up.
Every summer, cownose rays stream into Chesapeake Bay to mate and give birth to their pups. When autumn comes, they disappear--presumably to migrate south, but no one knew for certain where they spent the winter. Now, after a three-year tagging study published Aug. 23 and led by the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC), scientists have solved the mystery. Cownose rays all along the Atlantic winter near Cape Canaveral, Florida, and it is likely they return to the same spots each summer.
Turning up the thermostat may help manage hypertension, finds a new UCL study into the link between indoor temperatures and high blood pressure.
Comparing blood pressure readings of people in their own homes with temperature readings, the researchers found that lower indoor temperatures were associated with higher blood pressure, according to the new study in the Journal of Hypertension.
Bottom Line: Compared with non-drinkers, men who consumed at least seven drinks per week during adolescence (ages 15-19) had three times the odds of being diagnosed with clinically significant prostate cancer.
Journal in Which the Study was Published: Cancer Prevention Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research
Author: Emma Allott, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Philadelphia, August 23, 2018 - Dietary risk factors are among the key contributors to mortality and morbidity in the United States and globally, and there is increasing emphasis on understanding the influence of total diet quality and overall dietary patterns rather than single aspects of what we eat and drink. In order to evaluate the quality of what people eat and drink, researchers often rely on recommendations such as the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA).
If you're about to run headfirst into something, your reflex might be to tense your neck and stabilize your noggin. But according to new research from Stanford University that may not be the best way to stave off a concussion. Instead, the findings suggest that your head's position is more important than whether you are tensing your neck.
It all comes down to how your head accelerates backward after impact, which some think is the major factor controlling concussion risk. The work was published Aug. 20 in IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.
Nanoparticle manufacturing, the production of material units less than 100 nanometers in size (100,000 times smaller than a marble), is proving the adage that "good things come in small packages." Today's engineered nanoparticles are integral components of everything from the quantum dot nanocrystals coloring the brilliant displays of state-of-the-art televisions to the miniscule bits of silver helping bandages protect against infection.
In the Respirology study, investigators identified strong associations between several measures of OSA severity and higher total cholesterol, higher LDL-cholesterol, elevated triglycerides, and lower HDL-cholesterol. Lipid status was influenced by geographical location with the highest total cholesterol concentration recorded in Northern Europe.
The analysis included 8592 adults across Europe who were not diagnosed with hyperlipidaemia and were not taking lipid-lowering drugs.
Few studies have explored health professionals' understanding of racism in healthcare, and how they manage it in practice. A new Journal of Advanced Nursing study examined the issue through five focus group discussions with 31 maternal, child, and family health nurses working across metropolitan South Australia. These clinicians represent the core professional group working with infants and families in the first years of life.
A (wo)man is only as good as his or her tools. In the case of soil scientists, they are only as good as the tools and methods they use. And when it comes to estimating soil organic carbon stocks, new research shows not all tools give the same results.
New research published in the August edition of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology's Heart Failure issue found significant correlations between blood levels of EPA plus DHA omega-3s in "cognitive" (as opposed to "somatic") depression among heart failure subjects.