You've heard them at tennis matches – a loud, emphatic grunt with each player's stroke. A University of Hawai'i at Mānoa researcher has studied the impact of these grunts and come up with some surprising findings.
Culture
An intensive lifestyle intervention program designed to achieve and maintain weight loss improves diabetes control and cardiovascular disease risk factors in overweight and obese individuals with type 2 diabetes, according to four-year results of the Look AHEAD study, funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Faster development of the promising field of cellulosic biofuels – the renewable energy produced from grasses and trees – is being significantly hampered by a "deep and thorny regulatory thicket" that makes almost impossible the use of advanced gene modification methods, researchers say.
MINNEAPOLIS/ST.PAUL (October 1, 2010) – After a major review of scientific information, six leading tobacco research and policy experts have concluded that a nicotine reduction strategy should be an urgent research priority because of its potential to profoundly reduce the death and disease from tobacco use. Their findings were published today in the journal Tobacco Control.
New York, 1 October, 2010 – A special article published today in the journal Nutrition sharply criticizes the recent Report of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC). Authors Hite et al. argue the Report fails to conform to the standards of evidence-based medicine, despite its claimed reliance on a newly created USDA Nutrition Evidence Library.
The authors call the DGAC to task for failing to consider recent scientific results while at the same time further confusing the American public.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) today released a new study by scientists and conservationists showing that non-federal rangelands in the Western United States are productive, but that non-native grasses and shrubs pose a potential threat to the rangelands' productivity.
Montreal, October 1, 2010 – As baby boomers retire in greater numbers, serious doubts continue to be raised about the ability of the retirement income system to provide adequate replacement wages for the next generation of Canadians. According to a new study conducted by a Concordia University researcher for the Institute for Research on Public Policy, our country can learn valuable policy lessons from recent pension reforms in Norway, Sweden, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
(Rosemont, IL) Oct. 1 – For the past three decades, saturated fat has been considered a major culprit of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and as a result dietary advice persists in recommending reduced consumption of this macronutrient. However, new evidence shows that saturated fat intake has only a very limited impact on CVD risk -- causing many to rethink the "saturated fat is bad" paradigm.
An unparalleled heat wave in eastern Europe, coupled with intense droughts and fires around Moscow, put Earth's temperatures in the headlines this summer. Likewise, a string of exceptionally warm days in July in the eastern United States strained power grids, forced nursing home evacuations, and slowed transit systems. Both high-profile events reinvigorated questions about humanity's role in climate change.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA– Amblyopia, known as "lazy eye," is a major cause of vision problems in children and a common cause of blindness in people aged 20 to 70 in developed countries. In amblyopia the person's stronger eye is favored and his/her weaker eye gradually loses visual power as a result. When the condition is detected and treated before age 7, more than 75 percent of children achieve 20/30 vision or better, the Amblyopia Treatment Study reports. But parents and teachers can easily miss this problem–especially in very young children.
Drug companies have not only sponsored the science of a new condition known as female sexual dysfunction, they have helped to construct it, in order to build global markets for new drugs, reveals an article in this week's BMJ.
Troy, N.Y. – The National Lighting Product Information Program (NLPIP) released its latest Specifier Report, designed to provide objective performance information on existing street lighting technologies -- including light-emitting diode (LED), induction, and high pressure sodium (HPS) streetlights. This report comes at a critical time when many municipalities, some with funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, are in the process of replacing HPS streetlights with LED and induction models.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- MIT researchers and collaborators from Tufts University have now engineered E. coli bacteria to produce large quantities of a critical compound that is a precursor to the cancer drug Taxol, originally isolated from the bark of the Pacific yew tree. The tree's bacteria can produce 1,000 times more of the precursor, known as taxadiene, than any other engineered microbial strain.
As researchers and policymakers work toward an effective HIV vaccine in a constrained global economy, cost-effective prevention strategies such as Couples Voluntary Counseling and Testing (CVCT) must take a larger role in efforts to decrease the rates of HIV/AIDS in Africa, says Emory University HIV/AIDS vaccine researcher Susan Allen, MD, MPH.
Allen, who has worked to combat the AIDS epidemic in Africa for more than 25 years, highlighted the value of CVCT and other cost-effective HIV prevention strategies today at the AIDS Vaccine 2010 Conference in Atlanta.
KINGSTON, R.I.-– September 30, 2010 –Watching television and its heavy dose of medical content in news and drama can lead to more concern about personal health and reduce a person's satisfaction with life according to a new study out of the University of Rhode Island.