Air pollution. The digital health platform. Antibiotics. Infectious disease dynamics. Influence of climate. Bionic man. Happiness. Sleep and rest. Obesity. A Vending Machine To Give Helmets To Dangerously Under-Protected Bike Share Riders. Huge viruses may open 'Pandora's' box: French study. These viruses are so big they might just be your ancestors.
Two newly discovered viruses are twice as large as the previous record-holders and may represent a completely new life form, French scientists reported in the US journal Science. Can boosting immunity make you smarter? If Kipnis’s crazy idea was right, he reasoned, then he should be able to make the idiot mice smarter by giving them back their T cells.
He injected the cells into the mice’s bloodstream and gave the cells time to multiply and spread. Then he and his colleagues tested the mice again. With their T cells restored, they were idiots no more. They did almost as well as the mice born with normal immune systems. Because the blood-brain barrier made it impossible for the T cells to affect the brain from the inside, Kipnis wondered whether they were maximizing their long-distance influence by getting as close as they could to the brain.
This (theoretical) house is entirely powered by exercise. How would you like it if every single room in your house was an exercise station?
You think that would suck? Well, maybe it would create a lot of unpleasant pressure to be working out and make you feel like a big loser all the time, but then again, maybe it would make exercising so convenient that the habit would just fold seamlessly into your life. Researchers successfully map fountain of youth. In collaboration with an international research team, University of Copenhagen researchers have for the first time mapped telomerase, an enzyme which has a kind of rejuvenating effect on normal cell ageing.
The findings have just been published in Nature Genetics and are a step forward in the fight against cancer. Mapping the cellular fountain of youth - telomerase. This is one of the results of a major research project involving more than 1,000 researchers worldwide, four years of hard work, DKK 55 million from the EU and blood samples from more than 200,000 people. This is the largest collaboration project ever to be conducted within cancer genetics. 3-D-printed Cortex cast improves on plaster version. Researchers claim 3-D printers pose 'health risk' 317na4. Knome Software Makes Sense of the Genome. DNA decoder: Knome’s software can tease out medically relevant changes in DNA that could disrupt individual gene function or even a whole molecular pathway, as is highlighted here—certain mutations in the BRCA2 gene, which affects the function of many other genes, can be associated with an increased risk of breast cancer.
A genome analysis company called Knome is introducing software that could help doctors and other medical professionals identify genetic variations within a patient’s genome that are linked to diseases or drug response. This new product, available for now only to select medical institutions, is a patient-focused spin on Knome’s existing products aimed at researchers and pharmaceutical companies.
The Knome software turns a patient’s raw genome sequence into a medically relevant report on disease risks and drug metabolism. Water Cure for Stroke. A simple drink of water laced with hydrogen gas might prevent some of the brain damage resulting from strokes, new research conducted in mice suggests.
The gas seems to act as an antioxidant, protecting brain cells from the toxic aftereffects of oxygen starvation that strokes can cause. In ischemic stroke, a clot blocks blood flow to part of the brain, killing neurons in its wake. But the worst damage often happens after the clot dissolves and surviving brain cells revive. The cells release reactive oxygen species, molecules that damage and kill cells. The researchers are not sure why hydrogen helps, but it may react with and disable the toxic oxygen species. Vitamin C may protect marathon runners from colds, but what about the rest of us?
Daily supplements of vitamin C may reduce the risk of developing common cold for marathon runners by 50%, but there is little evidence that it helps the rest of us, says a new Cochrane review.
Data from five trials with 598 marathon runners, skiers and soldiers on subarctic exercises indicated that the risk of common cold was reduced by 52% for vitamin C supplements of 0.2 g per day or more, according to findings published in The Cochrane Library. However, data from 24 trials comparisons involving 10,708 participants from the general community revealed no significant changes to the risk of common cold.
Beer May Help Fight Off Viruses - Oddities News. December 8, 2012 redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online If you’re looking to fight off cold-like symptoms during the winter or trying to find a way to keep from contracting a serious respiratory illness this year, you might want to pop the top on a cold one, according to new research coming out of Sapporo Medical University in Japan. The study, which was funded by Tokyo-based beer maker Sapporo Breweries, has discovered humulone — a chemical compound that can be found in hops — was effective in battling off the respiratory syncytial (RS) virus, the Huffington Post reported on Friday.
“The RS virus can cause serious pneumonia and breathing difficulties for infants and toddlers, but no vaccination is available at the moment to contain it,” Jun Fuchimoto, a researcher from the company, said in an interview with AFP. Citizen Libraries Are The New Home For The Printed Word. The survival of the library, at least in its current form, appears tenuous.
Library conferences buzz with anxiety about "reinventing themselves. " Amazon.com can deliver a lifetime of reading to almost any electronic device in minutes. Computers, DVDs, and "digital activity centers" are crowding out books on library shelves. Vitamins: stop taking the pills. (5) Consistent food labelling system set for 2013. A consistent system of front-of-pack food labelling will be introduced in the UK next year, as the government attempts to curb growing rates of obesity.
Just over a quarter of adults in England were classified as being obese (BMI 30kg/m2 or over), according to 2010 figures published this year by NHS Information Centre. Urgent action is needed to tackle the epidemic as estimates show that by 2020, 41 per cent of men aged 20 to 65 will be obese and a further 40 per cent will be overweight. Meanwhile, 36 per cent of women will be obese and 32 per cent classed as overweight. Walnuts linked to 'significant' drop in diabetes risk. Frequent consumption of walnuts could help to slash the risk of type 2 diabetes by almost a quarter, according to new research.
The data comes from more than analysis of 135,000 people in the USA over a ten year period. Led by Professor Frank Hu and his team at the Harvard School of Public Health, USA, the researchers investigated the possible association between walnut intake and the incidence of type 2 diabetes in 2 large cohort studies: the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS) and NHS II. Writing in the Journal of Nutrition, the team show that eating walnuts two or three times a week was associated with a 24% reduction in the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Are Warnings About Drug Side Effects Actually Making Us Sick? : The Crux. Steve Silberman (@stevesilberman on Twitter) is a journalist whose articles and interviews have appeared in Wired, Nature, The New Yorker, and other national publications; have been featured on The Colbert Report; and have been nominated for National Magazine Awards and included in many anthologies.
The rise and rise of allergies. 23 February 2011Last updated at 12:16 By James Gallagher Health reporter, BBC News Allergies are becoming more common There is little doubt within the medical profession that the number of allergies in the UK is increasing. Research published in 2007 showed the number of hospital admissions for food allergies had increased by 500% since 1990. Meanwhile, cases of hay fever, asthma and eczema have been rising for three decades, meaning as many as one in three people are thought to be affected by an allergy at some point in their lives, according to the charity Allergy UK. This has led to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence publishing guidelines on how to deal with allergies in children. Are We Living Better With the Jawbone 'Up' Electronic Bracelet? Protein Boost Halts Huntington's.
In July researchers investigating Huntington’s disease announced a treatment that can eliminate the distorted proteins that cause the illness, offering hope to the 30,000 people afflicted in the United States. Brain Pacemaker May Treat Alzheimer’s. Last month, surgeons at Johns Hopkins implanted a pacemaker-like device into the brain of a patient with mild Alzheimer’s, the sixth patient in a multicenter trial of the experimental therapy. The hope is that the electrical stimulation delivered by the device could improve memory and slow cognitive decline in patients with the disease. Deep-brain stimulation is already used to treat patients with Parkinson’s, epilepsy, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and researchers are exploring its use in other conditions, including obesity.
FDA Approves First-Ever Digestible Digital Pill. The era of digital medicine just got one step closer to reality.