Hamilton, ON (October 1, 2009) – A McMaster University study has found that surgical masks appear to be as good as N95 respirators in protecting health-care workers against influenza.
The research, published online today in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), concluded that surgical masks have an estimated effectiveness within one per cent of N95 respirators, and are not associated with an increased rate of infection of influenza or other respiratory viruses.
New Orleans, LA – Research led by Hernan A. Bazan, MD, Assistant Professor of Surgery, Section of Vascular Surgery, at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans School of Medicine, has found that unstable carotid artery plaques – those in danger of rupturing and leading to a stroke – contain more inflammation and significantly less omega-3 fatty acids than asymptomatic plaques. This suggests that increasing the levels of omega-3 fatty acids in carotid artery plaques could either prevent strokes or improve the safety of treatment.
Surgical masks appear to be no worse than, and nearly as effective as N95 respirators in preventing influenza in health care workers, according to a study released early online today by JAMA. The study was posted online ahead of print because of its public health implications. It will be published in the November 4 issue of JAMA.
(CHICAGO - Sept. 30, 2009) U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Research and Development has completed its review of a dioxin exposure study conducted by the University of Michigan in the Midland-Saginaw, Michigan area. EPA found the study was conducted well and provided useful, scientifically credible information. However, the study is of limited value to help EPA fully evaluate human exposure to levels of dioxin in the Tittabawassee River and Saginaw River and Bay.
According to the AZTI-Tecnalia researchers, the first estimations of the geographical location of the recovered tag revealed that this fish had undertaken migrations between the Azores and Portugal during the winter, later to return to the Gulf of Bizkaia in spring and also that it had dived, during the winter, to depths of more than 1000 metres.
Surgical masks appear to be no worse than, and nearly as effective as N95 respirators in preventing influenza in health care workers, according to a study released early online today by JAMA. The study was posted online ahead of print because of its public health implications. It will be published in the November 4 issue of JAMA.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 1—The latest technology in optics and lasers will be on display at the Optical Society's (OSA) Annual Meeting, Frontiers in Optics (FiO), which takes place Oct. 11-15 at the Fairmont San Jose Hotel and the Sainte Claire Hotel in San Jose, Calif.
Information on free registration for reporters is contained at the end of this release. Research highlights of the meeting include:
When society jumps on a bandwagon, even for a good cause, there may be unintended consequences. The unintended consequence of crop-based biofuels may be the loss of wildlife habitat, particularly that of the birds who call this country's grasslands home, say researchersfrom Michigan Technological University and The Nature Conservancy.
According to climate change experts, our planet has a fever ― melting glaciers are just one stark sign of the radical changes we can expect. But global warming's effects on farming and water resources is still a mystery. A new Tel Aviv University invention, a real-time "Optical Soil Dipstick" (OSD), may help solve the mystery and provide a new diagnostic tool for assessing the health of our planet.
If a person loses a large amount of blood the consequences can be critical. That's why adequate quantities of donated blood have to be kept available in hospitals and blood banks. In Egypt doctors collect blood by traveling to towns and villages and conducting blood donation sessions in a laboratory bus. The problem is that 25 per cent of the samples taken contain pathogens, including HIV, hepatitis and syphilis. As these diseases can be passed on in transfusions, the contaminated blood cannot be used. Conventional fast tests are not suitable in most cases for mobile use.
ALEXANDRIA, VA, October 1, 2009 — Preterm infants who receive leg movement training display feet-reaching behaviors similar to that of full-term infants, according to a randomized controlled trial reported in the October issue of Physical Therapy (PTJ), the scientific journal of the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA). This finding supports feet-reaching play as an early intervention strategy to encourage interaction with physical objects in preterm infants who have movement problems within the first months of postnatal life.
CSIRO research on grains and lamb aimed at developing new dietary sources of long-chain omega-3 oils will be presented at the World Congress on Oils and Fats in Sydney this week.
CSIRO Food Futures Flagship scientist, Dr Surinder Singh, will outline his team's progress on the transfer into crop plants of biochemical pathways for long-chain omega-3 synthesis sourced from marine microalgae.
Australia has been stripped bare of vegetation to expose the surface that lies beneath.
Scientists from CSIRO's Water for a Healthy Country Flagship have removed approximately 90 per cent of Australia's vegetation cover from satellite images of the continent to produce the most detailed available Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of its topography.
"The DEM will revolutionise geological applications, land-use studies, soil science, and much more," CSIRO's Dr John Gallant said in an address today to the Spatial Sciences Conference in Adelaide.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – The optimal way to control swine flu, the new H1N1 virus that emerged as a global threat in 2009, is to vaccinate children with the planned H1N1 flu vaccine, says the co-director of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases.
A study described in the October issue of BioScience identifies diverse native prairie as holding promise for yielding bioenergy feedstocks while minimizing harm to wildlife. Harvesting diverse prairie, which is dominated by perennial plants, could avoid adverse environmental effects associated with expanding cultivation of corn for ethanol, such as loss of wildlife habitat and high fertilizer runoff. It could also avoid the threat of invasion posed by cultivation of exotic biofuel crops.