Public Health
Males more considerate than imagined
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Male worms plug females after copulation as a form of ‘gift’, rather than to prevent them from mating again, as had previously been thought. Researchers writing in BioMed Central’s open access journal Frontiers in Zoology found that plugged females mated just as often and were just as attractive as those who were unplugged, and that plugging ultimately improved female fitness.
Nadine Timmermeyer worked with a team of researchers from the University of Tuebingen, Germany, to investigate the effects of copulatory plugs in the nematode worm Caenorhabditis remanei. She said, “Our results indicate that plugging neither affects the likelihood that a female is located by males, nor whether or not mating ensues. However, we found that plugging has a significant positive effect on egg production, suggesting that plugs may represent a beneficial act of a male towards its female partner rather than a competitive act between males”.
Mating plugs have been documented for a broad range of animal groups, including insects, arachnids, reptiles, and rodents.
Dentists offer Halloween candy buyback program
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Just a day after Halloween two Pennsylvania dentists are offering a candy buyback program to save the teeth of young trick-or-treaters and boost the morale of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Dentists Nalin and Arpan Patel, of Fairless Hills near Philadelphia, say they will pay $1 a pound (0.45 kg) to parents and children who turn in excess candy collected on Halloween. The proceeds will be sent to U.S. troops serving in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
“Not only will it save your teeth, our troops that are serving our country overseas will be able to enjoy a Halloween away from home,” the dentists said in a statement.
US concussion guide makes return to play tougher
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New guidelines from the American Academy of Neurology say no U.S. athlete who has had a concussion should be allowed to resume play until all symptoms have passed, revising earlier guidelines that allowed some athletes back on the field after just a week on the sidelines.
The guidelines, published on Monday in the journal Neurology, set the standard of care for doctors and follow studies that suggest even small blows to the head can have a big impact on brain health.
“We now understand that there are some really profoundly bad possible outcomes either from two hits in a row or a lot of hits over a lifetime,” said Dr. Jeffrey Kutcher, who chairs the sports neurology section of the American Academy of Neurology.
Test shows no health risk to food from oil spill
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Testing has helped confirm that chemicals used to disperse oil from the BP spill have not made their way into fish, crabs, shrimp or oysters from the Gulf of Mexico, U.S. officials said on Friday.
Tests of more than 1,700 samples show that fewer than 1 percent had any trace of chemicals at all, and the ones that did had extremely low levels, the officials from the Food and Drug Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.
“This additional round of testing has confirmed ... that Gulf seafood brought to market is safe,” Dr. Vicki Seyfert-Margolis, FDA’s senior adviser for science and innovation, told a telephone briefing.
Anna Nicole Smith boyfriend convicted in drug trial
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Anna Nicole Smith’s former boyfriend and a doctor were convicted on Thursday of helping to keep the former Playboy model supplied with painkillers and other prescription drugs before her death.
But after a two-month trial, a Los Angeles jury acquitted a second doctor on all charges in what was seen by the defense as a victory for physicians who treat patients with chronic pain.
Smith’s companion and lawyer Howard K. Stern was convicted on two counts of conspiracy for using false names to obtain prescription drugs for his lover, but was acquitted on seven more serious charges.
Scientists call for tighter regulations on food adverts during children’s TV viewing
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The researchers, in partnership with the Cancer Council, Australia, studied 12,618 food advertisements from 11 countries and found that 67 per cent endorsed unhealthy food. The research builds on a previous study at Liverpool which revealed that children would consume twice as many calories from snacks after watching food adverts compared to after viewing advertising for toys and games.
The research reveals that Germany, Spain and Greece have the highest frequency of adverts promoting unhealthy foods during children’s peak viewing time, compared to other European countries and parts of the US, Canada and Australia. These adverts tend to feature child-orientated persuasive techniques, such as the use of popular animated characters and celebrities.
Although the US, Canada and Australia have a lower rate of unhealthy food advertising overall, broadcasters still air the adverts more frequently during a time when children are watching.
Most prefer touching toilet to handshake
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Most U.S. adults would rather touch a public toilet seat than shake someone’s hand after they’ve coughed or sneezed into it, a survey indicates.
The survey, commissioned by Purell Instant Hand Sanitizer, says two in five U.S. adults say they have hesitated to shake hands with someone because of their fear of germs.
Four in five Americans say they think people are shaking hands less frequently than they did 25 years ago. However, 56 percent say cold and flu germs are the worst part of a winter handshake, and 49 would prefer using a fist bump over a handshake—15 percent due to the fear of germs, 13 percent because of sweaty palms and 6 percent because of dry hands.
Canada needs to improve end-of-life care
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Better psychological and spiritual support, improved planning of care and stronger relationships with physicians are necessary to improve end-of-life care in Canada, according to a study by a Queen’s University professor.
“High quality end-of-life care should be the right of every Canadian,” says professor of Medicine and Epidemiology Daren Heyland, who is also a researcher at Kingston General Hospital. “But it’s not always happening. We know from international studies that Canada ranks ninth in the world in terms of quality of care provided at the end of life.”
The study, a questionnaire that aimed to measure satisfaction with end-of-life care for patients with advanced diseases and their families, involved 363 patients over 55 years of age and 193 family caregivers.
Small particles show big promise in beating unpleasant odors
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Scientists are reporting development of a new approach for dealing with offensive household and other odors — one that doesn’t simply mask odors like today’s room fresheners, but eliminates them at the source. Their research found that a deodorant made from nanoparticles — hundreds of times smaller than peach fuzz — eliminates odors up to twice as effectively as today’s gold standard. A report on these next-generation odor-fighters appears in ACS’ Langmuir, a bi-weekly journal.
Brij Moudgil and colleagues note that consumers use a wide range of materials to battle undesirable odors in clothing, on pets, in rooms, and elsewhere. Most common household air fresheners, for instance, mask odors with pleasing fragrances but do not eliminate the odors from the environment. People also apply deodorizing substances that absorb smells. These materials include activated carbon and baking soda. However, these substances tend to have only a weak ability to absorb the chemicals responsible for the odor.
Scientists meet in Ethiopia to broaden market opportunities for Africa’s livestock farmers
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As agricultural leaders across the globe look for ways to increase investments in agriculture to boost world food production, experts in African livestock farming are meeting in Addis Ababa this week to deliberate on ways to get commercialized farm production, access to markets, innovations, gender issues and pro-poor policies right for Africa’s millions of small-scale livestock farmers and herders.
More than 70 percent of Africa’s rural poor are livestock farmers. Each farm animal raised is a rare source of high-quality food, particularly of dietary protein, minerals, vitamins and micronutrients, for these households. Pastoralists, who rely on herding their animal stock to survive in the continent’s dry and otherwise marginalized environments, also make up a significant number of Africa’s population.
‘There is a growing recognition by governments and donors that expanding investment in the agricultural sector is a cornerstone for alleviating poverty and building assets in Africa and other developing regions,’ said Carlos Seré, director general of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).
Better transparency needed on medical journals’ competing interests
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Journals need to develop policies to handle the inevitable competing interests that arise when they publish papers that may bring them reprint revenue or increase their impact factors. This is the conclusion of a research article by Andreas Lundh and colleagues from the Nordic Cochrane Centre published in this weeks PLoS Medicine. An accompanying perspective by Harvey Marcovitch, ex-chair of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and an editorial from the PLoS Medicine Editors discusses this issue further, concluding that journals should apply the same degree of transparency that they require from authors, to themselves.
The article examined randomized clinical trials published in six general medical journals (not including PLoS Medicine but including New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), the British Medical Journal (BMJ), The Lancet, Annals of Internal Medicine, Archives of Internal Medicine, and JAMA,) over two time periods, 1996� and 2005�, and assessed which of the trials were supported wholly, partly, or not at all by industry. They then used the online academic citation index Web of Science to calculate an approximate impact factor for each journal for 1998 and 2007 and calculated the effect of the published RCTs on the impact factor.
The proportion of RCTs with sole industry support varied between journals. 32% of the RCTs published in the NEJM during both two-year periods had industry support whereas only 7% of the RCTs published in the BMJ in 2005� had industry support. Industry-supported trials were more frequently cited than RCTs with other types of support; omitting industry-supported RCTs from impact factor calculations decreased all the approximate journal impact factors. For example, omitting all RCTs with industry or mixed support decreased the 2007 BMJ and NEJM impact factors by 1% and 15%, respectively.
The bonus of the fitness buddy
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Fitness loves company, whether it’s a running buddy, a spotter in the weight room, or a pal to bolster your courage as you tackle that first yoga class.
Experts say buddying up can make your workout easier to stick with and harder to miss.
“People don’t necessarily work out for social reasons, but that social factor can keep them working out,” said Kerri O’Brien of Life Fitness, the equipment manufacturer.
Scientists reveal the sex wars of the truffle grounds
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They are one of the most highly prized delicacies in the culinary world, but now scientists have discovered that black truffles are locked in a gender war for reproduction. The research, published in New Phytologist as the truffle season begins, represents a breakthrough in the understanding of truffle cultivation and distribution.
The teams, led by Dr Francesco Paolocci and Dr Andrea Rubini from the CNR Plant Genetics Institute in Perugia and by Dr Francis Martin from INRA in Nancy, carried out their research on the reproduction strategy of the highly prized black truffle, Tuber melanosporum, which is grown across southern Europe. During the truffle season, between late autumn and winter, fruiting truffles can grow up to 7cm in diameter, weighing up to 100g with a value often measured in hundreds of Euros.
‘Fruiting’ is the crucial part of the truffle life cycle, occurring when the fungi interacts with and colonises host plants, usually at the roots. However, the process which causes this transition from vegetative to reproductive state remains unknown.
Rubbish crisis making us ill, say Naples residents
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Clutching her sickly 1-1/2-year-old son, Anna Langella says the family doctor had this simple prescription for her: move somewhere else.
Langella says her toddler often vomits and she blames this on the foul smell and toxic waste piling up in a rubbish dump near her house in Terzigno, on the outskirts of Naples where the streets are strewn with mounds of garbage.
“We have to keep the children inside, with the doors and windows shut, but even then it’s not enough,” she told Reuters. “It’s terrible. The state has abandoned us.”
Practice-changing studies on how oncologists treat cancer to be presented at ASTRO Annual Meeting
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The following are highlights of new cancer research being released at the American Society for Radiation Oncology’s (ASTRO) 52nd Annual Meeting to be held October 31 through November 4, 2010, in San Diego.
For full copies of the abstracts and press releases, contact Nicole Napoli at [email protected] or Beth Bukata at [email protected]. Studies are embargoed until October 25, 2010, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern time.
Adding radiation to hormone therapy for prostate cancer treatment will increase survival chances
Prostate cancer patients who are treated with a combination of hormone therapy and radiation have a substantially improved chance of survival compared to patients who do not receive radiation, according to interim results of the largest randomized study of its kind presented at the plenary session, November 1, 2010…
