Culture

SAN DIEGO (April 30, 2014) – New analysis of data from the 2003-2010 What We Eat In America (WWEIA) National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a program of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), indicates that consumers of frozen meals (1) compared to consumers of quick service restaurant (QSR) meals (2) had lower calorie intakes and better Healthy Eating Index (HEI) score. In fact, the analysis revealed that those who consumed frozen meals consumed 253 fewer calories than those who consumed a quick service restaurant meal.

If you think Neanderthals were stupid and primitive, it's time to think again.

The widely held notion that Neanderthals were dimwitted and that their inferior intelligence allowed them to be driven to extinction by the much brighter ancestors of modern humans is not supported by scientific evidence, according to a researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder.

An analysis of the archaeological records of Neandertals and their modern human contemporaries has found that complex interbreeding and assimilation may have been responsible for Neandertal disappearance 40,000 years ago, in contrast to many current theories, according to results published April 30, 2014, in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Paola Villa from the University of Colorado Museum and Wil Roebroeks from Leiden University in the Netherlands.

CHICAGO --- Pushing a shopping cart or a vacuum doesn't take a lot of effort, but enough of this sort of light physical activity every day can help people with or at risk of knee arthritis avoid developing disabilities as they age, according to a new Northwestern Medicine® study.

It is known that the more time people spend in moderate or vigorous activities, the less likely they are to develop disability, but this is the first study to show that spending more time in light activities can help prevent disability, too.

A newly developed pressure sensor could help car manufacturers design safer automobiles and even help Little League players hold their bats with a better grip, scientists report. The study describing their high-resolution sensor, which can be painted onto surfaces or built into gloves, appears in the ACS journal Nano Letters.

Sophia Antipolis, 30 April 2014.A drug known to reduce mortality rate in patients with heart failure has now been found significantly effective when administered early in patients following an acute (ST elevated) myocardial infarction. This effect,say the investigators, was consistent across all study sub-groups, but was "particularly obvious in patients undergoing reperfusion within six hours of symptom onset".

A large proportion of strokes may not be attributable to known causative risk factors, according to a study published in this week's PLOS Medicine. Michiel Bos and colleagues from the Erasmus Medical Center, in the Netherlands, report that only about half of all strokes are attributable to established causative factors for stroke, a much smaller proportion than estimated by previous studies.

Toronto, ON, Canada, April 29, 2014 – Children with a heart defect called transposition of great arteries (TGA) are born with the two major blood vessels (aorta and the main lung artery) arising from the wrong sides of the heart. Consequently, blood is pumping inappropriately between the lungs and the rest of the body, a fatal condition unless surgically treated. The surgery of choice, the arterial switch operation (ASO), is usually performed within the first few weeks of life. In a retrospective analysis of 30 years of experience performing ASOs, Hanna A.

Combining the estrogen hormone estriol with Copaxone, a drug indicated for the treatment of patients with relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis (MS), may improve symptoms in patients with the disorder, according to preliminary results from a clinical study of 158 patients with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS). The findings were presented today by Rhonda Voskuhl, M.D., from the University of California, Los Angeles, at the American Academy of Neurology Annual Meeting in Philadelphia.

Human factors/ergonomics (HF/E) experts, like professionals in many other scientific domains, have joined the fight against global warming and climate change. Their research and practice focus on finding ways to combat or minimize its serious effects.

Washington, DC—The World Health Organization's tool for assessing bone fracture risk underestimates the true dangers for people who are younger than 65 or have been treated for a single broken bone, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM).

Anti-smoking television advertisements that appeal to viewers' emotions are more persuasive when they use anger rather than sadness, a Dartmouth-Cornell study suggests.

The study appears in the Journal of Health Communication. A PDF is available on request.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – A review of more than 25,000 admissions of Medicare beneficiaries to Rhode Island hospitals has found that patients with a documented diagnosis of dementia are nearly 20 percent more likely to be readmitted within 30 days than those without dementia. The study by Rhode Island Hospital researchers is published online in advance of print in the journal Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics.

U.S. commercial and recreational saltwater fishing generated more than $199 billion in sales in 2012, a gain of seven percent over the previous year, with the economic impact of fishing jobs increasing three percent from 2011 to 2012, according to a new NOAA Fisheries economics report.

Further, two more fish stocks were rebuilt to target levels in 2013, bringing the number of rebuilt U.S. marine fish stocks to 34 since 2000, according to another NOAA Fisheries report also released today.

TAMPA, Fla. (April 29, 2014) – When six university leaders took the stage at the 2013 Annual Conference of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), held just over a year ago at the University of South Florida, they began a national conversation on changing the academic culture to recognize faculty patents and commercialization activity toward tenure and promotion. That conversation, according to NAI president Paul R. Sanberg, was long overdue.