One dose of the pandemic flu vaccines used in seven European countries conferred good protection against pandemic H1N1 influenza in the 2009-10 season, especially in people aged less than 65 years and in those without any chronic diseases. These findings from a study funded by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and coordinated by EpiConcept, Paris, France, published in this week's PLoS Medicine, give an indication of the vaccine effectiveness for the influenza A (H1N1) 2009 strain included in the 2010-11 seasonal vaccines.
Culture
San Diego, CA, January 11, 2011 – Launched on December 2, 2010, Healthy People 2020 is an ambitious, science-based, 10-year agenda for improving the health of all Americans. A key component, Education for Health, is an educational roadmap to achieve the Healthy People 2020 goals.
The opening of buds on Douglas-fir trees each spring is the result of a complex interplay between cold and warm temperatures during the winter, scientists with the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station have found.
Montreal, 11 January 2011—What is the future for North America's environment? Much of the answer is up to us.
A new report examines the major forces and underlying trends likely to shape the environment of North America in 2030 and outlines nine areas where decisions today will affect our environmental future in varying degrees.
PROVIDENCE, RI – Does obesity tend to "cluster" among young adults? And if so, what impact does it have on both their weight and weight-related behaviors? That's what researchers from The Miriam Hospital's Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center set out to answer to better understand how social influences affect both weight status and weight loss intentions in this difficult-to-reach age group.
Life expectancy was probably the same for early modern and late archaichumans and did not factor in the extinction of Neanderthals, suggests a new study by a Washington University in St. Louis anthropologist.
Erik Trinkaus, PhD, Professor of Anthropology in Arts & Sciences, examined the fossil record to assess adult mortality for both groups, which co-existed in different regions for roughly 150,000 years. Trinkaus found that the proportions of 20 to 40-year-old adults versus adults older than 40, were about the same for early modern humans and Neandertals.
Small children are capable of engaging in issues concerning sustainable development.Their interests and rights must be better safeguarded in rules and policy decisions that concern the education of the youngest groups of children within the EU.
Swedes drink less and less alcohol while at the same time the Swedish Alcohol Retail Monopoly's salesare rising and statistics from Statistics Sweden show that alcohol consumption is on the increase. Thishas been the trend for a long period of time. Statistics from the Centre for Social Research on Alcoholand Drugs, SoRAD, show that alcohol consumption fell continuously in the period from 2004 to 2009,whereas the Swedish Alcohol Retail Monopoly's sales rose by 22% over the same period.
An estimated 6.5 percent of Americans age 40 and older have the eye disease age-related macular degeneration, a lower rate than was reported 15 years ago, according to a report in the January issue of Archives of Ophthalmology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
It is well known that pain is a highly subjective experience. We each have a pain threshold, but this can vary depending on distractions and mood. A paper in the International Journal of Behavioural and Healthcare Research offers a cautionary note on measuring perceived pain in research.
Persistence paid off for a University of Alberta paleontology researcher, who after months of pondering the origins of a fossilized jaw bone, finally identified it as a new species of pterosaur, a flying reptile that lived 70 million years ago.
Victoria Arbour says she was stumped when the small piece of jaw bone was first pulled out of of a fossil storage cabinet in the U of A's paleontology department.
"It could have been from a dinosaur, a fish or a marine reptile," said Arbour. "
Researchers at the University of Warwick's Centre for Fusion Space and Astrophysics and the UK Atomic Energy Authority's Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, may have found a way to channel the flux and fury of a nuclear fusion plasma into a means to help sustain the electric current needed to contain that very same fusion plasma.
The researchers used large scale computer simulations to confirm a longstanding prediction by US researchers that high energy alpha particles born in fusion reactions will be key to generating fusion power in the next planned generation of tokamaks.
A paper describing a dramatic change during the 20th century in England and Wales in the association between social class and mortality from liver cirrhosis features in Alcohol and Alcoholism. While deaths from cirrhosis were more common among higher social classes in the early part of the century, the pattern changed so that deaths from cirrhosis were much more common among the lower social classes by the end of the century. Data on male cirrhosis mortality by social class were obtained from the Registrar General's Decennial Supplements for the years 1921�.