Arctic melt season lengthening, ocean rapidly warming

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The length of the melt season for Arctic sea ice is growing by several days each decade, and an earlier start to the melt season is allowing the Arctic Ocean to absorb enough additional solar radiation in some places to melt as much as four feet of the Arctic ice cap’s thickness, according to a new study by National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA researchers.Arctic sea ice has been in sharp decline during the last four decades. The sea ice cover is shrinking and thinning, making scientists think an ice-free Arctic Ocean during the summer might be reached this century. The seven lowest September sea ice extents in the satellite record have all occurred in the past seven years.”The Arctic is warming and this is causing the melt season to last longer,” said Julienne Stroeve, a senior scientist at NSIDC, Boulder and lead author of the new study, which has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters. “The lengthening of the melt season is allowing for more of the sun’s energy to get stored in the ocean and increase ice melt during the summer, overall weakening the sea ice cover.”To study the evolution of sea ice melt onset and freeze-up dates from 1979 to the present day, Stroeve’s team used passive microwave data from NASA’s Nimbus-7 Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer, and the Special Sensor Microwave/Imager and the Special Sensor Microwave Imager and Sounder carried onboard Defense Meteorological Satellite Program spacecraft.When ice and snow begin to melt, the presence of water causes spikes in the microwave radiation that the snow grains emit, which these sensors can detect. Once the melt season is in full force, the microwave emissivity of the ice and snow stabilizes, and it doesn’t change again until the onset of the freezing season causes another set of spikes. Scientists can measure the changes in the ice’s microwave emissivity using a formula developed by Thorsten Markus, co-author of the paper and chief of the Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.Results show that although the melt season is lengthening at both ends, with an earlier melt onset in the spring and a later freeze-up in the fall, the predominant phenomenon extending the melting is the later start of the freeze season. Some areas, such as the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, are freezing up between six and 11 days later per decade. But while melt onset variations are smaller, the timing of the beginning of the melt season has a larger impact on the amount of solar radiation absorbed by the ocean, because its timing coincides with when the sun is higher and brighter in the Arctic sky.Despite large regional variations in the beginning and end of the melt season, the Arctic melt season has lengthened on average by five days per decade from 1979 to 2013.Still, weather makes the timing of the autumn freeze-up vary a lot from year to year.”There is a trend for later freeze-up, but we can’t tell whether a particular year is going to have an earlier or later freeze-up,” Stroeve said. “There remains a lot of variability from year to year as to the exact timing of when the ice will reform, making it difficult for industry to plan when to stop operations in the Arctic.”To measure changes in the amount of solar energy absorbed by the ice and ocean, the researchers looked at the evolution of sea surface temperatures and studied monthly surface albedo data (the amount of solar energy reflected by the ice and the ocean) together with the incoming solar radiation for the months of May through October. The albedo and sea surface temperature data the researchers used comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s polar-orbiting satellites.They found that the ice pack and ocean waters are absorbing more and more sunlight due both to an earlier opening of the waters and a darkening of the sea ice. …


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Satellite shows high productivity from US corn belt

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Data from satellite sensors show that during the Northern Hemisphere’s growing season, the Midwest region of the United States boasts more photosynthetic activity than any other spot on Earth, according to NASA and university scientists.Healthy plants convert light to energy via photosynthesis, but chlorophyll also emits a fraction of absorbed light as fluorescent glow that is invisible to the naked eye. The magnitude of the glow is an excellent indicator of the amount of photosynthesis, or gross productivity, of plants in a given region.Research in 2013 led by Joanna Joiner, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., demonstrated that fluorescence from plants could be teased out of data from existing satellites, which were designed and built for other purposes. The new research led by Luis Guanter of the Freie Universitt Berlin, used the data for the first time to estimate photosynthesis from agriculture. Results were published March 25 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.According to co-author Christian Frankenberg of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., “The paper shows that fluorescence is a much better proxy for agricultural productivity than anything we’ve had before. This can go a long way regarding monitoring — and maybe even predicting — regional crop yields.”Guanter, Joiner and Frankenberg launched their collaboration at a 2012 workshop, hosted by the Keck Institute for Space Studies at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, to explore measurements of photosynthesis from space. The team noticed that on an annual basis, the tropics are the most productive. But during the Northern Hemisphere’s growing season, the U.S. Corn Belt “really stands out,” Frankenberg said. “Areas all over the world are not as productive as this area.”The researchers set out to describe the phenomenon observed by carefully interpreting the data from the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment 2 (GOME-2) on Metop-A, a European meteorological satellite. Data showed that fluorescence from the Corn Belt, which extends from Ohio to Nebraska and Kansas, peaks in July at levels 40 percent greater than those observed in the Amazon.Comparison with ground-based measurements from carbon flux towers and yield statistics confirmed the results.The match between ground-based measurements and satellite measurements was a “pleasant surprise,” said Joiner, a co-author on the paper. …


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Can gratitude reduce costly impatience?

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The human mind tends to devalue future rewards compared to immediate ones — a phenomenon that often leads to favoring immediate gratification over long-term wellbeing. As a consequence, patience has long been recognized to be a virtue. And indeed, the inability to resist temptation underlies a host of problems ranging from credit card debt and inadequate savings to unhealthy eating and drug addiction.The prevailing view for reducing costly impatience has emphasized the use of willpower. Emotions were to be tamped down in order to avoid irrational impulses for immediate gain. But as Northeastern University psychologist David DeSteno notes, “Emotions exist to serve adaptive purposes, so the idea that emotions would always be a hindrance to long-term success makes little sense.”In a potentially landmark study forthcoming in the journal Psychological Science, a team of researchers from Northeastern University, the University of California, Riverside, and Harvard Kennedy School challenge the conventional view by demonstrating that feelings of gratitude automatically reduce financial impatience.The StudyImpatience was assessed using a set of decisions pitting desire for instant gratification against waiting for larger, future rewards. For example, participants chose between receiving $54 now or $80 in 30 days. To increase the stakes, participants had the chance to obtain one of the financial rewards they selected. But before making these decisions, participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions in which they wrote about an event from their past that made them feel (a) grateful, (b) happy, or (c) neutral, depending on condition.Although participants feeling neutral and happy showed a strong preference for immediate payouts, those feeling grateful showed more patience. For example, they required $63 immediately to forgo receiving $85 in three months, whereas neutral and happy people required only $55 to forgo the future gain. What’s more, the degree of patience exhibited was directly related to the amount of gratitude any individual felt. …


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Eating seven or more portions of fruit and vegetables a day reduces your risk of death by 42 percent

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Eating seven or more portions of fruit and vegetables a day reduces your risk of death at any point in time by 42% compared to eating less than one portion, reports a new UCL study.Researchers used the Health Survey for England to study the eating habits of 65,226 people representative of the English population between 2001 and 2013, and found that the more fruit and vegetables they ate, the less likely they were to die at any age. Eating seven or more portions reduces the specific risks of death by cancer and heart disease by 25% and 31% respectively. The research also showed that vegetables have significantly higher health benefits than fruit.This is the first study to link fruit and vegetable consumption with all-cause, cancer and heart disease deaths in a nationally-representative population, the first to quantify health benefits per-portion, and the first to identify the types of fruit and vegetable with the most benefit.Compared to eating less than one portion of fruit and vegetables, the risk of death by any cause is reduced by 14% by eating one to three portions, 29% for three to five portions, 36% for five to seven portions and 42% for seven or more. These figures are adjusted for sex, age, cigarette smoking, social class, Body Mass Index, education, physical activity and alcohol intake, and exclude deaths within a year of the food survey.The study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, found that fresh vegetables had the strongest protective effect, with each daily portion reducing overall risk of death by 16%. Salad contributed to a 13% risk reduction per portion, and each portion of fresh fruit was associated with a smaller but still significant 4% reduction.”We all know that eating fruit and vegetables is healthy, but the size of the effect is staggering,” says Dr Oyinlola Oyebode of UCL’s Department of Epidemiology & Public Health, lead author of the study. “The clear message here is that the more fruit and vegetables you eat, the less likely you are to die at any age. Vegetables have a larger effect than fruit, but fruit still makes a real difference. If you’re happy to snack on carrots or other vegetables, then that is a great choice but if you fancy something sweeter, a banana or any fruit will also do you good.”The findings lend support to the Australian government’s ‘Go for 2 + 5′ guidelines, which recommend eating two portions of fruit and five of vegetables. The UK Department of Health recommends ’5 a day’, while ‘Fruit and Veggies — More Matters’ is the key message in the USA.”Our study shows that people following Australia’s ‘Go for 2 + 5′ advice will reap huge health benefits,” says Dr Oyebode. “However, people shouldn’t feel daunted by a big target like seven. …


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Breakthrough in creating invisibility cloaks, stealth technology

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Controlling and bending light around an object so it appears invisible to the naked eye is the theory behind fictional invisibility cloaks.It may seem easy in Hollywood movies, but is hard to create in real life because no material in nature has the properties necessary to bend light in such a way. Scientists have managed to create artificial nanostructures that can do the job, called metamaterials. But the challenge has been making enough of the material to turn science fiction into a practical reality.The work of Debashis Chanda at the University of Central Florida, however, may have just cracked that barrier. The cover story in the March edition of the journal Advanced Optical Materials, explains how Chanda and fellow optical and nanotech experts were able to develop a larger swath of multilayer 3-D metamaterial operating in the visible spectral range. They accomplished this feat by using nanotransfer printing, which can potentially be engineered to modify surrounding refractive index needed for controlling propagation of light.”Such large-area fabrication of metamaterials following a simple printing technique will enable realization of novel devices based on engineered optical responses at the nanoscale,” said Chanda, an assistant professor at UCF.The nanotransfer printing technique creates metal/dielectric composite films, which are stacked together in a 3-D architecture with nanoscale patterns for operation in the visible spectral range. Control of electromagnetic resonances over the 3-D space by structural manipulation allows precise control over propagation of light. Following this technique, larger pieces of this special material can be created, which were previously limited to micron-scale size.By improving the technique, the team hopes to be able to create larger pieces of the material with engineered optical properties, which would make it practical to produce for real-life device applications. For example, the team could develop large-area metamaterial absorbers, which would enable fighter jets to remain invisible from detection systems.Story Source:The above story is based on materials provided by University of Central Florida. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


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Warming climate may spread drying to a third of earth: Heat, not just rainfall, plays into new projections

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Increasing heat is expected to extend dry conditions to far more farmland and cities by the end of the century than changes in rainfall alone, says a new study. Much of the concern about future drought under global warming has focused on rainfall projections, but higher evaporation rates may also play an important role as warmer temperatures wring more moisture from the soil, even in some places where rainfall is forecasted to increase, say the researchers.The study is one of the first to use the latest climate simulations to model the effects of both changing rainfall and evaporation rates on future drought. Published this month in the journal Climate Dynamics, the study estimates that 12 percent of land will be subject to drought by 2100 through rainfall changes alone; but the drying will spread to 30 percent of land if higher evaporation rates from the added energy and humidity in the atmosphere is considered. An increase in evaporative drying means that even regions expected to get more rain, including important wheat, corn and rice belts in the western United States and southeastern China, will be at risk of drought. The study excludes Antarctica.”We know from basic physics that warmer temperatures will help to dry things out,” said the study’s lead author, Benjamin Cook, a climate scientist with joint appointments at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “Even if precipitation changes in the future are uncertain, there are good reasons to be concerned about water resources.”In its latest climate report, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that soil moisture is expected to decline globally and that already dry regions will be at greater risk of agricultural drought. The IPCC also predicts a strong chance of soil moisture drying in the Mediterranean, southwestern United States and southern African regions, consistent with the Climate Dynamics study.Using two drought metric formulations, the study authors analyze projections of both rainfall and evaporative demand from the collection of climate model simulations completed for the IPCC’s 2013 climate report. Both metrics agree that increased evaporative drying will probably tip marginally wet regions at mid-latitudes like the U.S. Great Plains and a swath of southeastern China into aridity. If precipitation were the only consideration, these great agricultural centers would not be considered at risk of drought. …


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Hearing loss affects old people"s personality

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As people approach old age, they generally become less outgoing. New research from the University of Gothenburg shows that this change in personality is amplified among people with impaired hearing. The findings emphasise the importance of acknowledging and treating hearing loss in the elderly population.The researchers studied 400 individuals 80-98 years old over a six-year period. Every two years, the subjects were assessed in terms of physical and mental measures as well as personality aspects such as extraversion, which reflects the inclination to be outgoing, and emotional stability. The results show that even if the emotional stability remained constant over the period, the participants became less outgoing.Interestingly, the researchers were not able to connect the observed changes to physical and cognitive impairments or to age-related difficulties finding social activities. The only factor that could be linked to reduced extraversion was hearing loss.’To our knowledge, this is the first time a link between hearing and personality changes has been established in longitudinal studies. Surprisingly, we did not find that declining overall health and functional capacity make people less outgoing. But hearing loss directly affects the quality of social situations. If the perceived quality of social interaction goes down, it may eventually affect whether and how we relate to others,’ says Anne Ingeborg Berg, PhD, licensed psychologist and researcher at the Department of Psychology, University of Gothenburg.The study yields interesting knowledge about personality development late in life, and also points to the importance of acknowledging and treating hearing loss among the elderly.The utilisation of hearing aids did not affect the correlation found, which suggests that there is a need for support in the use of aids such as hearing devices.’Our previous studies have shown that outgoing individuals are happier with their lives. It is hypothesised that an outgoing personality reflects a positive approach to life, but it also probably shows how important it is for most people to share both joy and sadness with others. …


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New human trial shows stem cells are effective for failing hearts: Bone marrow-derived stem cells injected directly into heart muscle

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Patients with severe ischemic heart disease and heart failure can benefit from a new treatment in which stem cells found in bone marrow are injected directly into the heart muscle, according to research presented at the American College of Cardiology’s 63rd Annual Scientific Session.”Our results show that this stem cell treatment is safe and it improves heart function when compared to placebo,” said Anders Bruun Mathiasen, M.D., research fellow in the Cardiac Catherization Lab at Rigshospitalet University Hospital Copenhagen, and lead investigator of the study. “This represents an exciting development that has the potential to benefit many people who suffer from this common and deadly disease.”Ischemic heart disease, also known as coronary artery disease, is the number one cause of death for both men and women in the United States. It results from a gradual buildup of plaque in the heart’s coronary arteries and can lead to chest pain, heart attack and heart failure.The study is the largest placebo-controlled double-blind randomized trial to treat patients with chronic ischemic heart failure by injecting a type of stem cell known as mesenchymal stromal cells directly into the heart muscle.Six months after treatment, patients who received stem cell injections had improved heart pump function compared to patients receiving a placebo. Treated patients showed an 8.2-milliliter decrease in the study’s primary endpoint, end systolic volume, which indicates the lowest volume of blood in the heart during the pumping cycle and is a key measure of the heart’s ability to pump effectively. The placebo group showed an increase of 6 milliliters in end systolic volume.The study included 59 patients with chronic ischemic heart disease and severe heart failure. Each patient first underwent a procedure to extract a small amount of bone marrow. Researchers then isolated from the marrow a small number of mesenchymal stromal cells and induced the cells to self-replicate. Patients then received an injection of either saline placebo or their own cultured mesenchymal stromal cells into the heart muscle through a catheter inserted in the groin.”Isolating and culturing the stem cells is a relatively straightforward process, and the procedure to inject the stem cells into the heart requires only local anesthesia, so it appears to be all-in-all a promising treatment for patients who have no other options,” Mathiasen said.Although there are other therapies available for patients with ischemic heart disease, these therapies do not help all patients and many patients continue to face fatigue, shortness of breath and accumulation of fluid in the lungs and legs.Previous studies have shown mesenchymal stromal cells can stimulate repair and regeneration in a variety of tissues, including heart muscle. Mathiasen said in the case of ischemic heart failure, the treatment likely works by facilitating the growth of new blood vessels and new heart muscle.The study also supports findings from previous, smaller studies, which showed reduced scar tissue in the hearts of patients who received the stem cell treatment, offering additional confirmation that the treatment stimulates the growth of new heart muscle cells.The researchers will continue to monitor the patients to assess their long-term outcomes.”We hope that the improvements in heart pump function will not only improve the patients’ symptoms but also will result in increased survival for these severely diseased patients,” Mathiasen said.A larger, Phase III clinical trial will be needed to move toward approval of this treatment as a more widely used therapy for ischemic heart failure.”Our results should offer sufficient evidence that a larger trial is indeed warranted as a next step,” Mathiasen said.Story Source:The above story is based on materials provided by American College of Cardiology. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


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A Closer Look: Understanding Clinical Trials

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A Closer Look: Understanding Clinical Trials



If you have been diagnosed with mesothelioma, you may consider participating in a clinical trial.
Generally, clinical trials test experimental drugs and treatments and aim to develop new ways of detecting and diagnosing a disease. Doctors use...

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Temperature fluctuations: Atlantic Ocean dances with the sun and volcanoes

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Natural fluctuations in the ocean temperature in the North Atlantic have a significant impact on the climate in the northern hemisphere. These fluctuations are the result of a complex dance between the forces of nature, but researchers at Aarhus University can now show that solar activity and the impact of volcanic eruptions have led this dance during the last two centuries.Imagine a ballroom in which two dancers apparently keep in time to their own individual rhythm. The two partners suddenly find themselves moving to the same rhythm and, after a closer look, it is clear to see which one is leading.It was an image like this that researchers at Aarhus University were able to see when they compared studies of solar energy release and volcanic activity during the last 450 years, with reconstructions of ocean temperature fluctuations during the same period.The results actually showed that during the last approximately 250 years — since the period known as the Little Ice Age — a clear correlation can be seen where the external forces, i.e. the Sun’s energy cycle and the impact of volcanic eruptions, are accompanied by a corresponding temperature fluctuation with a time lag of about five years.In the previous two centuries, i.e. during the Little Ice Age, the link was not as strong, and the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean appears to have followed its own rhythm to a greater extent.The results were recently published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.In addition to filling in yet another piece of the puzzle associated with understanding the complex interaction of the natural forces that control the climate, the Danish researchers paved the way for linking the two competing interpretations of the origin of the oscillation phenomenon.Temperature fluctuations discovered around the turn of the millenniumThe climate is defined on the basis of data including mean temperature values recorded over a period of thirty years. Northern Europe thus has a warm and humid climate compared with other regions on the same latitudes. This is due to the North Atlantic Drift (often referred to as the Gulf Stream), an ocean current that transports relatively warm water from the south-west part of the North Atlantic to the sea off the coast of Northern Europe.Around the turn of the millennium, however, climate researchers became aware that the average temperature of the Atlantic Ocean was not entirely stable, but actually fluctuated at the same rate throughout the North Atlantic. This phenomenon is called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), which consists of relatively warm periods lasting thirty to forty years being replaced by cool periods of the same duration. The researchers were able to read small systematic variations in the water temperature in the North Atlantic in measurements taken by ships during the last 140 years.Although the temperature fluctuations are small — less than 1C — there is a general consensus among climate researchers that the AMO phenomenon has had a major impact on the climate in the area around the North Atlantic for thousands of years, but until now there has been doubt about what could cause this slow rhythm in the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean. One model explains the phenomenon as internal variability in the ocean circulation — somewhat like a bathtub sloshing water around in its own rhythm. …


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Agroforestry systems can repair degraded watersheds

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Agroforestry, combined with land and water management practices that increase agricultural productivity, can save watersheds from degradation.A study conducted by the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in the Gabayan watershed in eastern Bohol, Philippines, has shown that agroforestry systems create a more sustainably managed watershed that allows people living there to benefit from the ecosystem. The benefits include higher crop yields, increased income and resilience to climate change.Agroforestry is an integrated land-use management technique that incorporates trees and shrubs with crops and livestock on farms.The study, called “Modeling the effects of adopting agroforestry on basin scale surface runoff and sediment yield in the Philippines,” uses a computer-based Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to simulate the effects of different land uses on watershed hydrology and the ecosystem services provided by the Gabayan watershed. The tool predicts the environmental impact of land use, land management practices, and climate change.Watersheds are areas of land with streams and rivers that all drain into a larger body of water, such as a bigger river, a lake or an ocean. Watersheds not only supply water for domestic use but also provide a multitude of ecological and cultural services, including water for irrigation and industry, shelter, habitats for biodiversity and, in very poor areas, sources of livelihoods.Over the years, however, many watersheds throughout the world have suffered from intensive resource extraction and mismanagement. In countries like the Philippines, several watershed areas in the country are now degraded due to deforestation and soil erosion.The Gabayan watershed incorporates a heavily degraded, multi-use landscape covering over 5000 hectares hosting about 60,000 people whose livelihoods depend on subsistence agricultureFarmers here have reported environmental problems, such as floods, droughts, reductions in water quality and increases in soil erosion and downstream sedimentation of irrigation networks.”The degraded watershed has been largely deforested and replaced with extensive agricultural and grasslands over the last half century,” says David Wilson, the lead researcher. “It has disrupted the evenness of river flow, resulting in alternate flooding and drought episodes, an accelerated level of soil erosion as well as downstream sedimentation.”SWAT was used to simulate the impacts of current land-use practices and conservation agriculture with agroforestry in strategic locations. The study results showed a significant reduction in sediment yield (20%) and sediment concentration (35%)in the Gabayan watershed under agroforestry and conservation agriculture.The study was therefore able to provide scientific evidence that agroforestry, combined with improved land management practices, are an effective land-use strategy for the watersheds.”Specifically, the use of restored areas that have vegetation next to water resources and contour planting in grasslands appear to be the most effective techniques to reduce sediment transfer to the watershed river network,” says Wilson.Story Source:The above story is based on materials provided by World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF). Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


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Increasing longevity of seeds with genetic engineering

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A study developed by researchers of the Institute for Plant Molecular and Cell Biology (IBMCP), a joint center of the Universitat Politcnica de Valncia and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), in collaboration with the Unit for Plant Genomics Research of Evry, France (URGV, in French) has discovered a new way of improving the longevity of plant seeds using genetic engineering. Plant Physiology magazine has published the research results.The key is the overexpression of the ATHB25 gene. This gene encodes a protein that regulates gene expression, producing a new mutant that gives the seed new properties. Researchers have proven that this mutant has more gibberellin -the hormone that promotes plant growth-, which means the seed coat is reinforced as well. “The seed coat is responsible for preventing oxygen from entering the seed; the increase in gibberellin strengthens it and this leads to a more durable and longer lasting seed,” explains Eduardo Bueso, researcher at the IBMCP (UPV-CSIC).This mechanism is new, as tolerance to stresses such as aging has always been associated with another hormone, abscisic acid, which regulates defenses based on proteins and small protective molecules, instead of producing the growth of structures like gibberellin does.The study has been made on the experimental model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, a species that presents great advantages for molecular biology research. Researchers of the IBMCP traced half a million seeds, related to one hundred thousand lines of Arabidopsis mutated by T-DNA insertion, using the natural system of Agrobacterium tumefaciens. “Finally, we analyzed four mutants in the study and we proved the impact on the seed longevity when the overexpression of the ATHB25 gene is introduced,” states Ramn Serrano, researcher at the IBMCP.Researchers compared the longevity of genetically modified Arabidopsis seeds and seeds which were not modified. In order to do this, they preserved them for thirty months under specific conditions of room temperature and humidity. After thirty months, only 20% of the control plants germinated again, whereas almost the all of the modified plants (90%) began the germination process again.Researchers of the IBMCP are now trying to improve the longevity of different species that are of agronomical interest, such as tomatoes or wheat.Biodiversity and benefits for farmersThis discovery is particularly significant for the conservation of biodiversity, preserving seed species and, especially, for farmers.”In the past, a lot of different plant species were cultivated, but many of them are dissapearing because high performance crops have now become a priority. Seed banks were created in order to guarantee the conservation of species, but they require a periodical regeneration of the seeds. …


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Rural versus urban causes of childhood concussion

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Researchers at Western University (London, Canada) have found youth living in rural areas are more likely to sustain concussions from injuries involving motorized vehicles such as all-terrain vehicles and dirt bikes, whereas youth living in urban areas suffer concussions mostly as a result of sports. Hockey accounts for 40 per cent of those injuries. The study which reveals where and how children are receiving concussions is published in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery.Dr. Doug Fraser, a scientist with the Children’s Health Research Institute at Lawson Health Research Institute and Tanya Charyk Stewart, the Injury Epidemiologist for the Trauma Program at Children’s Hospital, London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) and their team tracked all the youth under the age of 18 who presented to the LHSC emergency departments with a concussion over a six year period. There were 2,112 paediatric concussions, with a steady increase in number treated each year.”It was important for us to learn about who is getting injured, where they’re getting injured, and why they’re getting injured. Once you answer those questions, then you can implement targeted injury prevention programs,” says Dr. Fraser, an associate professor in the Departments of Paediatrics, Physiology & Pharmacology and Clinical Neurological Sciences at Western’s Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry.Concussions are a particular concern for children and adolescents because their brains are still developing and they are more susceptible to effects of a head injury. The goal following this research is to create injury prevention programs that target and educate those at high risk of sustaining a concussion.Concussions can often be predictable. Along with properly following the rules of the sport and wearing the protective equipment, Charyk Stewart suggests, “In sports, if you have been hit, then just get off the field immediately and stop play. If you are experiencing any symptoms, be seen by a doctor.”Dr. …


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Growth of breast lifts outpacing implants 2-to-1, stats show

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New statistics released today by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) show that breast lift procedures are growing at twice the rate of breast implant surgeries. Since 2000, breast lifts have grown by 70 percent, outpacing implants two-to-one. Breast implants are still by far the most performed cosmetic surgery in women, but lifts are steadily gaining. In 2013, more than 90,000 breast lift procedures were performed by ASPS member surgeons.”Many women are looking for a youthful breast by using the tissue they already have,” said ASPS President Robert X. Murphy, Jr., MD.According to the new statistics, women between the ages of 30-54 made up nearly 70 percent of the breast lift procedures performed in 2013. “The breast lift procedure is way up in my practice,” said Anne Taylor, MD, an ASPS-member plastic surgeon in Columbus, Ohio. “More women are coming to us who’ve had children, whose breast volume has decreased and who are experiencing considerable sagging,” she said. “For many of them, we are able to get rid of excess skin and lift the breasts back up where they’re supposed to be.”Kim Beckman of Casstown, Ohio is one of the women who went to Dr. Taylor. “Childbirth, breastfeeding and aging takes a toll on the body,” she said. …


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Relaxed blood pressure guidelines cut millions from needing medication

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New guidelines that ease the recommended blood pressure could result in 5.8 million U.S. adults no longer needing hypertension medication, according to an analysis by Duke Medicine researchers.The findings are the first peer-reviewed analysis to quantify the impact of guidelines announced in February by the Eighth Joint National Committee. In a divisive move, the committee relaxed the blood pressure goal in adults 60 years and older to 150/90, instead of the previous goal of 140/90.Blood pressure goals were also eased for adults with diabetes and kidney disease.”Raising the target in older adults is controversial, and not all experts agree with this new recommendation,” said lead author Ann Marie Navar-Boggan, a cardiology fellow at Duke University School of Medicine. “In this study, we wanted to determine the number of adults affected by these changes.”Researchers at the Duke Clinical Research Institute, in collaboration with McGill University, published their results online March 29, 2014, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, to coincide with the American College of Cardiology meeting in Washington, D.C.Researchers used 2005-2010 data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The database included more than 16,000 participants with blood pressure measurements.Based on the study sample, the researchers determined that the proportion of U.S. adults considered eligible for hypertension treatment would decrease from 40.6 percent under the old guidelines to 31.7 percent under the new recommendations.In addition, 13.5 million adults — most of them over the age of 60 — would no longer be classified in a danger zone of poorly controlled blood pressure, and instead would be considered adequately managed. This includes 5.8 million U.S. adults who would no longer need blood pressure pills if the guidelines were rigidly applied.”The new guidelines do not address whether these adults should still be considered as having hypertension,” Navar-Boggan said. “But they would no longer need medication to lower their blood pressure.”According to the study, one in four adults over the age of 60 is currently being treated for high blood pressure and meeting the stricter targets set by previous guidelines.”These adults would be eligible for less intensive blood pressure medication under the new guidelines, particularly if they were experiencing side effects,” Navar-Boggan said. “But many experts fear that increasing blood pressure levels in these adults could be harmful.”"This study reinforces how many Americans with hypertension fall into the treatment ‘gray zone’ where we don’t know how aggressive to treat and where we urgently need to conduct more research” said Eric D. …


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High blood pressure increases risk of stroke for atrial fibrillation patients

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Poor blood pressure control among patients with atrial fibrillation is associated with a 50-percent increased risk of stroke, according to an analysis presented by Duke Medicine researchers.The findings, presented in a poster Saturday, March 29, 2014, at the American College of Cardiology meeting in Washington, D.C., suggest that hypertension should be carefully monitored and controlled among patients with atrial fibrillation.Using data from a large clinical trial called ARISTOTLE, the Duke researchers analyzed more than 18,000 patients with atrial fibrillation to understand how high blood pressure affects their health.Strokes were more common in atrial fibrillation patients who had a history of high blood pressure, or who had high blood pressure at the start of the study. A significant increase in the risk of stroke was also seen in patients who had high blood pressure measurements at any point during the study.“This study is unique in that we looked at patients with atrial fibrillation who had a history of high blood pressure, patients who had high blood pressure measurement at the start of the study, and blood pressure control during the course of the study,” said lead author Meena Rao, M.D., MPH, research fellow at the Duke Clinical Research Institute.“We found that having high blood pressure at any point during the trial led to an increased risk of stroke by approximately 50 percent in patients with atrial fibrillation,” Rao said. “This highlights the importance of blood pressure control in addition to anticoagulation to reduce the risk of stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation.”Story Source:The above story is based on materials provided by Duke Medicine. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


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93-year-old esophageal cancer survivor makes the most of every day

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93-year-old esophageal cancer survivor makes the most of every day




via Cancerwise | Cancer blog from MD Anderson Cancer Center:
When Gus Kunze was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 2011, his daughter Joyce Matula laid out all the facts for her 90-year-old dad. She presented him with all...

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Earth"s dynamic interior: Multiple compositional components of Earth"s deep mantle carried up to surface

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Seeking to better understand the composition of the lowermost part of Earth’s mantle, located nearly 2,900 kilometers (1,800 miles) below the surface, a team of Arizona State University researchers has developed new simulations that depict the dynamics of deep Earth. A paper published March 30 in Nature Geoscience reports the team’s findings, which could be used to explain the complex geochemistry of lava from hotspots such as Hawaii.Mantle convection is the driving force behind continental drift and causes earthquakes and volcanoes on the surface. Through mantle convection, material from the lowermost part of Earth’s mantle could be carried up to the surface, which offers insight into the composition of the deep Earth. Earth’s core is very hot (~4000 K) and rocks at the core mantle boundary are heated and expand to have a lower density. These hot rocks (also called mantle plumes) could migrate to the surface because of buoyancy.Observations, modeling and predictions have indicated that the deepest mantle is compositionally complex and continuously churning and changing.”The complex chemical signatures of hotspot basalts provide evidence that the composition of the lowermost part of Earth’s mantle is different from other parts. The main question driving this research is how mantle plumes and different compositional components in Earth’s mantle interact with each other, and how that interaction leads to the complex chemistry of hotspot basalts. The answer to this question is very important for us to understand the nature of mantle convection,” explains lead author Mingming Li, who is pursuing his Ph.D. in geological sciences.”Obviously, we cannot go inside of Earth to see what is happening there. However, the process of mantle convection should comply with fundamental physics laws, such as conservation of mass, momentum and energy. What we have done is to simulate the process of mantle convection by solving the equations which controls the process of mantle convection,” says Li.It has long been suggested that Earth’s mantle contains several different compositional reservoirs, including an ancient more-primitive reservoir at the lowermost mantle, recycled oceanic crust and depleted background mantle. …


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"Best practices" nutrition measurement for researchers

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At first glance, measuring what the common fruit fly eats might seem like a trivial matter, but it is absolutely critical when it comes to conducting studies of aging, health, metabolism and disease. How researchers measure consumption can make all the difference in the accuracy of a study’s conclusions.Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have developed what amounts to a best practices guide to the most accurate way of measuring fruit fly food consumption that could lead to more informed research and better decisions about directions in further studies.”While our study isn’t the final technical reference on measuring fly food consumption, it will help guide researchers to think more carefully about nutrition and nutrient intake in their own studies,” said TSRI Assistant Professor William Ja, who led the study, which was published online ahead of print on March 30, 2014 by the journal Nature Methods.Researchers, Ja said, generally haven’t given sufficient thought to feeding and nutrient intake when it comes to measuring fruit fly behavior, metabolism and health.”If you’re making a huge effort to change an animal’s diet and trying to draw conclusions about what nutrition and nutrients do to animal health and lifespan,” he said, “then one of the most fundamental parameters is accurately measuring food intake.”TSRI Research Associate Sonali Deshpande, a first author of the study with graduate student Ariadna Amador and former TSRI Research Associate Gil Carvalho, underlined the importance of using the best measurement methods. “Drug studies, in particular, where compounds are added to fly food, are difficult to interpret without proper measurement of food and drug intake,” she said.In the study, the team determined that radioisotope labeling food is the most sensitive and consistently accurate feeding method now available — levels of accumulated isotope are later measured in the animals. This method’s main limitation appears to be underestimation of consumption due to excretion.For the most accurate measurement, the study suggested pairing radioisotope labeling with a more low-tech approach, such as the capillary feeder (CAFE). The CAFE assay, introduced by Ja in 2007, is similar to a water dispenser used for pet hamsters, but on a smaller scale.”In a significant number of studies, we found that researchers appeared indifferent to the impact feeding might have on the experiment,” Ja said. “This doesn’t seem like good science to me. Can you imagine doing a mouse experiment, saying that you watched mice for four hours and saw no difference in feeding, then make conclusions about total caloric intake over days or longer?”Story Source:The above story is based on materials provided by Scripps Research Institute. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


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Number of babies mom has may play role in future cardiovascular health

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Women who give birth to four or more children are much more likely to have evidence of plaque in their heart or thickening of their arteries — early signs of cardiovascular disease — compared with those having fewer pregnancies, according to research to be presented at the American College of Cardiology’s 63rd Annual Scientific Session.While earlier studies have shown an association between several aspects of pregnancy — physiological changes, complications, number of pregnancies — and future heart disease risk, many questions remain about how pregnancy might affect cardiovascular risk. To better understand the potential link, researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center set out to determine whether the number of live births is associated with early signs of cardiovascular disease.”This is not a recommendation for women to only have two or three children,” said Monika Sanghavi, M.D., chief cardiology fellow, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and lead investigator of the study. This is the first study to look at two markers of subclinical atherosclerosis — a gradual narrowing and hardening of the arteries that can eventually block blood flow and lead to stroke and heart attack.”Our findings add to the growing body of evidence that the changes associated with pregnancy may provide insight into a woman’s future cardiovascular risk and deserves further attention.”The study included 1,644 women from the Dallas Heart Study, a multiethnic population-based cohort, who had both self-reported information about the number of live births and relevant imaging study data available. The average age at the time of analysis was 45 years and slightly more than half of the women (55 percent) were African-American. Coronary artery calcium (CAC) scores were measured using computed tomography imaging and aortic wall thickness (AWT) by magnetic resonance imaging to determine whether or not women had evidence of subclinical atherosclerosis in the heart and artery walls. CAC was positive if it was greater than 10 and AWT was abnormal if it was greater than the 75th percentile for age and gender. These tests were done as part of standard subject participation in the Dallas Heart Study.Using women who had two or three live births as a reference, women who had given birth to four or more children had an approximately two-fold increased risk of having abnormal CAC or AWT. This association remained even after adjusting for socioeconomic status, education, race and factors known to heighten the risk of cardiovascular disease. Women who had more babies were more likely to be older, Hispanic, have high blood pressure, higher body mass index and lower socioeconomic status.Curiously, women who had zero or just one live birth were also more likely to show evidence of subclinical atherosclerosis — revealing a U-shaped relationship.Authors say it is unclear why this might be the case. But Sanghavi and others speculate they may have captured some women in this group who have an underlying condition that prevents them from carrying a first or second pregnancy to term, which may also predispose them to cardiovascular disease or risk factors. …


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Why we miss subtle visual changes, and why it keeps us sane

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Ever notice how Harry Potter’s T-shirt changes from a crewneck to a henley shirt in the “Order of the Phoenix,” or how in “Pretty Woman,” Julia Roberts’ croissant inexplicably morphs into a pancake? Don’t worry if you missed those continuity bloopers. Vision scientists at UC Berkeley and MIT have discovered an upside to the brain mechanism that can blind us to subtle visual changes in the movies and in the real world.They’ve discovered a “continuity field” in which we visually merge together similar objects seen within a 15-second time frame, hence the previously mentioned jump from crewneck to henley goes largely unnoticed. Unlike in the movies, objects in the real world don’t spontaneously change from, say, a croissant to a pancake in a matter of seconds, so the continuity field is stabilizing what we see over time.”The continuity field smoothes what would otherwise be a jittery perception of object features over time,” said David Whitney, associate professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and senior author of the study published today (March 30) in the journal, Nature Neuroscience.”Essentially, it pulls together physically but not radically different objects to appear more similar to each other,” Whitney added. “This is surprising because it means the visual system sacrifices accuracy for the sake of the continuous, stable perception of objects.”Conversely, without a continuity field, we may be hypersensitive to every visual fluctuation triggered by shadows, movement and myriad other factors. For example, faces and objects would appear to morph from moment to moment in an effect similar to being on hallucinogenic drugs, researchers said.”The brain has learned that the real world usually doesn’t change suddenly, and it applies that knowledge to make our visual experience more consistent from one moment to the next,” said Jason Fischer, a postdoctoral fellow at MIT and lead author of the study, which he conducted while he was a Ph.D. student in Whitney’s Lab at UC Berkeley.To establish the existence of a continuity field, the researchers had study participants view a series of bars, or gratings, on a computer screen. The gratings appeared at random angles once every five seconds.Participants were instructed to adjust the angle of a white bar so that it matched the angle of each grating they just viewed. They repeated this task with hundreds of gratings positioned at different angles. The researchers found that instead of precisely matching the orientation of the grating, participants averaged out the angle of the three most recently viewed gratings.”Even though the sequence of images was random, participants’ perception of any given image was biased strongly toward the past several images that came before it,” said Fischer, who calls this phenomenon “perceptual serial dependence.”In another experiment, researchers set the gratings far apart on the computer screen, and found that the participants did not merge together the angles when the objects were far apart. …


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Heart valve systems compared

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Among patients undergoing aortic valve replacement using a catheter tube, a comparison of two types of heart valve technologies, balloon-expandable or self-expandable valve systems, found a greater rate of device success with the balloon-expandable valve, according to a JAMA study released online to coincide with presentation at the 2014 American College of Cardiology Scientific Sessions.Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) has emerged as a new option for patients with severe narrowing of the aortic valve and as an effective alternative treatment method to surgical aortic valve replacement in selected high-risk patients. Different from surgery, transcatheter placement (via the patient’s groin) of aortic valve prostheses requires either a self-expandable or balloon-expandable system. A direct comparison of these 2 systems has not been previously performed, according to background information in the article.Mohamed Abdel-Wahab, M.D., of the Segeberger Kliniken, Bad Segeberg, Germany, and colleagues with the CHOICE trial, randomly assigned patients with aortic stenosis (narrowing) who met other criteria to receive either a balloon-expandable valve (n = 121) or self-expandable valve (n = 120). Device success was defined by several measures, including successful vascular access and deployment of the device and retrieval of the delivery system, correct position of the device, and performance of the heart valve without moderate or severe regurgitation (backflow of blood through the valve).The researchers found that device success occurred in 116 of 121 patients (95.9 percent) in the balloon-expandable group and 93 of 120 patients (77.5 percent) of patients in the self-expandable group. This difference was attributed to a lower frequency of more-than-mild aortic regurgitation (4.1 percent vs 18.3 percent) and the less frequent need for implanting more than 1 valve (0.8 percent vs 5.8 percent) in the balloon-expandable valve group.Bleeding and vascular complications were not significantly different between groups. Cardiovascular mortality at 30 days was 4.1 percent in the balloon-expandable valve group and 4.3 percent in the self-expandable valve group. Need for placement of a new permanent pacemaker was less frequent in the balloon-expandable valve group.”With an accumulating body of evidence linking more-than-mild aortic regurgitation and consequently device failure with a worse clinical outcome after transcatheter aortic valve replacement, the findings of the CHOICE trial may have important clinical implications. Notably, at short-term follow-up, improvement of heart failure symptoms was more frequently observed with the balloon-expandable valve, whereas minor stroke rates were numerically higher. Nevertheless, long-term follow-up of the CHOICE population should be awaited to determine whether the observed differences in device success will translate into a clinically relevant overall benefit for the balloon-expandable valve,” the authors write.Editorial: Selection of Valves for TAVR — Is the CHOICE Clear?Further investigation is needed to determine which valve examined in this study will provide better long-term survival rate and better quality of life, write E. Murat Tuzcu, M.D., and Samir R. …


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Cyclist Wins Pothole Injury Compensation

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Home » No Win No Fee » Latest Personal Injury News » 2014 » 3 » Cyclist Wins Pothole Injury CompensationCyclist Wins Pothole Injury CompensationA cyclist from Hertfordshire has won his case against the County Council after he lost his job due to the injuries he suffered in a road accident when he came off his bicycle.Alan Curtis, who lives in Bushey, was earning £96,000 a year in a charity fundraising directorship when he came off his bike after it hit a pothole in October 2009.The accident in Rickmansworth led to him suffering a fractured skull, leaving him with hearing problems and short-term memory loss; the Evening Standard reports.Mr Curtis, who also broke his arm in the accident, was eventually able to return to work, but had to take a less demanding post with a salary of only £30,000. He decided to sue the County Council due to its failure to maintain the road surface and ensure the safety of riders.The bicycle accident claim was successful as Judge Pittaway QC awarded Mr Curtis £69,425, which includes £20,000 to cover any potential unemployment he may suffer should he be required to change jobs again. In making his adjudication, he said the accident will either have occurred because of Mr Curtis being thrown off his bike by hitting the pothole, or losing balance as he tried to swerve to avoid it.Commenting after the award, the 56-year old told the Evening Standard, ”I’m quite pleased. I have always said I never came into this for the money and I didn’t expect to win a life-changing amount.”But the more I thought about it and the more I realised I have got permanent injuries that I will have for the rest of my life, I just felt that someone ought to be held to account. In that sense, justice has been done.”The verdict was welcomed by Mr Curtis’s solicitor Kevin O’Sullivan, who said the judgement may open the “floodgates” and lead to a series of further pothole injury compensation claims against Councils that fail to maintain the roads. Describing the outcome as “great news for cyclists”, he criticised Hertfordshire County Council for not deciding to settle out of Court. However, the local authority was unhappy with the verdict. Its spokesman said, ”Mr Curtis’s pothole accident is regrettable. However, Hertfordshire County Council is disappointed with the outcome of the judgement.”The possibility of a large number of claims arising against Councils for pothole related accidents may be increased by the high number of such problems occurring on roads across the country, following the severe weather endured in the winter.However, in his budget speech last week, chancellor George Osborne acknowledged that “our roads have taken a battering” and revealed that a £200 million cash pot will be made available for Councils to apply to access in order to fund road repairs.This may lead to fewer problems in some local authorities, but where pothole accidents do occur, it may be that Councils unsuccessfully applying for funds attempt to use a lack of financial support as a defence. Conversely, those that do receive funds but fail to repair potholes may find any cases that arise harder to defend.By Francesca WitneyOr Call freephone 0800 884 0321SHARE THIS


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Northern and southern hemisphere climates follow the beat of different drummers

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Over the last 1000 years, temperature differences between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres were larger than previously thought. Using new data from the Southern Hemisphere, researchers have shown that climate model simulations overestimate the links between the climate variations across Earth with implications for regional predictions.These findings are demonstrated in a new international study coordinated by Raphael Neukom from the Oeschger Centre of the University of Bern and the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL and are published today in the journal Nature Climate Change.The Southern Hemisphere is a challenging place for climate scientists. Its vast oceans, Antarctic ice, and deserts make it particularly difficult to collect information about present climate and, even more so, about past climate. However, multi-centennial reconstructions of past climate from so-called proxy archives such as tree-rings, lake sediments, corals, and ice-cores are required to understand the mechanisms of the climate system. Until now, these long-term estimates were almost entirely based on data from the Northern Hemisphere.Over the past few years, an international research team has made a coordinated effort to develop and analyse new records that provide clues about climate variation across the Southern Hemisphere. Climate scientists from Australia, Antarctic-experts, as well as data specialists and climate modellers from South and North America and Europe participated in the project. They compiled climate data from over 300 different locations and applied a range of methods to estimate Southern Hemisphere temperatures over the past 1000 years. In 99.7 percent of the results, the warmest decade of the millennium occurs after 1970.Surprisingly, only twice over the entire last millennium have both hemispheres simultaneously shown extreme temperatures. One of these occasions was a global cold period in the 17th century; the other one was the current warming phase, with uninterrupted global warm extremes since the 1970s. “The ‘Medieval Warm Period’, as identified in some European chronicles, was a regional phenomenon,” says Raphael Neukom. …


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Meeting climate targets may require reducing meat, dairy consumption

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Greenhouse gas emissions from food production may threaten the UN climate target of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, according to research at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden.On Monday 31 March the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) presents their report on the impacts of climate change.Carbon dioxide emissions from the energy and transportation sectors currently account for the largest share of climate pollution. However, a study from Chalmers now shows that eliminating these emissions would not guarantee staying below the UN limit. Emissions from agriculture threaten to keep increasing as global meat and dairy consumption increases. If agricultural emissions are not addressed, nitrous oxide from fields and methane from livestock may double by 2070. This alone would make meeting the climate target essentially impossible.”We have shown that reducing meat and dairy consumption is key to bringing agricultural climate pollution down to safe levels,” says Fredrik Hedenus, one of the study authors. “Broad dietary change can take a long time. We should already be thinking about how we can make our food more climate friendly.”By 2070, there will be many more of us on this planet. Diets high in meat, milk, cheese, and other food associated with high emissions are expected to become more common. Because agricultural emissions are difficult and expensive to reduce via changes in production methods or technology, these growing numbers of people, eating more meat and dairy, entail increasing amounts of climate pollution from the food sector.”These emissions can be reduced with efficiency gains in meat and dairy production, as well as with the aid of new technology,” says co-author Stefan Wirsenius. “But the potential reductions from these measures are fairly limited and will probably not suffice to keep us within the climate limit, if meat and dairy consumption continue to grow.”Beef and lamb account for the largest agricultural emissions, relative to the energy they provide. …


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Too many diet drinks may spell heart trouble for older women

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It appears healthy postmenopausal women who drink two or more diet drinks a day may be more likely to have a heart attack, stroke or other cardiovascular problems, according to research to be presented at the American College of Cardiology’s 63rd Annual Scientific Session.In fact, compared to women who never or only rarely consume diet drinks, those who consumed two or more a day were 30 percent more likely to suffer a cardiovascular event and 50 percent more likely to die from related disease. Researchers analyzed diet drink intake and cardiovascular risk factors from 59,614 participants in the Women’s Health Initiative Observational Study, making this the largest study to look at the relationship between diet drink consumption, cardiac events and death.”Our findings are in line with and extend data from previous studies showing an association between diet drinks and metabolic syndrome,” said Ankur Vyas, M.D., fellow, Cardiovascular Diseases, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, and the lead investigator of the study. “We were interested in this research because there was a relative lack of data about diet drinks and cardiovascular outcomes and mortality.”Information on women’s consumption of diet drinks was obtained through a questionnaire that asked them to report their diet drink consumption habits over the previous three months. This information was assessed at follow-up year three of the Women’s Health Initiative Observational Study. Each drink was defined as the equivalent of a 12-ounce beverage and included both diet sodas and diet fruit drinks. For the purposes of the analysis, researchers divided the women into four consumption groups: two or more diet drinks a day, five to seven diet drinks per week, one to four diet drinks per week, and zero to three diet drinks per month.After an average follow-up of 8.7 years, the primary outcome — a composite of incident coronary heart disease, congestive heart failure, heart attack, coronary revascularization procedure, ischemic stroke, peripheral arterial disease and cardiovascular death — occurred in 8.5 percent of the women consuming two or more diet drinks a day compared to 6.9 percent in the five-to-seven diet drinks per week group; 6.8 percent in the one-to-four drinks per week group; and 7.2 percent in the zero-to-three per month group.The association persisted even after researchers adjusted the data to account for demographic characteristics and other cardiovascular risk factors and comorbidities, including body mass index, smoking, hormone therapy use, physical activity, energy intake, salt intake, diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol and sugar-sweetened beverage intake. Women who consumed two or more diet drinks a day were younger, more likely to be smokers, and had a higher prevalence of diabetes, hypertension and higher body mass index.But Vyas says the association between diet drinks and cardiovascular problems raises more questions than it answers, and should stimulate further research.”We only found an association, so we can’t say that diet drinks cause these problems,” Vyas said, adding that there may be other factors about people who drink more diet drinks that could explain the connection.”It’s too soon to tell people to change their behavior based on this study; however, based on these and other findings we have a responsibility to do more research to see what is going on and further define the relationship, if one truly exists,” he adds. “This could have major public health implications.”About one in five people in the U.S. consume diet drinks on a given day, according to data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2009-2010). But Vyas cautions that this particular study only applies to postmenopausal women. …


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Medication does not reduce risk of recurrent cardiac events among patients with diabetes

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Use of the drug aleglitazar, which has shown the ability to lower glucose levels and have favorable effects on cholesterol, did not reduce the risk of cardiovascular death, heart attack or stroke among patients with type 2 diabetes and recent heart attack or unstable angina, according to a JAMA study released online to coincide with presentation at the 2014 American College of Cardiology Scientific Sessions.Cardiovascular disease remains the dominant cause of death among patients with type 2 diabetes. No drug therapy specifically directed against diabetes nor strategy for tight glucose control has been shown to unequivocally reduce the rate of cardiovascular complications in this population, according to background information in the article. In phase 2 trials, aleglitazar significantly reduced glycated hemoglobin levels (measure of blood glucose over an extended period of time), triglycerides, and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and increased high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C).A. Michael Lincoff, M.D., of the Cleveland Clinic, and colleagues conducted a phase 3 trial in which 7,226 patients hospitalized for heart attack or unstable angina with type 2 diabetes were randomly assigned to receive aleglitazar or placebo daily. The AleCardio trial was conducted in 720 hospitals in 26 countries throughout North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific regions.The trial was terminated early (July 2013) after an average follow-up of 104 weeks, due to lack of efficacy and a higher rate of adverse events in the aleglitazar group.The researchers found that although aleglitazar reduced glycated hemoglobin and improved serum HDL-C and triglyceride levels, the drug did not decrease the time to cardiovascular death, nonfatal heart attack, or nonfatal stroke (primary end points). These events occurred in 344 patients (9.5 percent) in the aleglitazar group and 360 patients (10.0 percent) in the placebo group.Aleglitazar use was associated with increased risk of kidney abnormalities, bone fractures, gastrointestinal bleeding, and hypoglycemia (low blood sugars).”These findings do not support the use of aleglitazar in this setting with a goal of reducing cardiovascular risk,” the authors conclude.Story Source:The above story is based on materials provided by The JAMA Network Journals. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


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Eating fruits, vegetables linked to healthier arteries later in life

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Women who ate a diet high in fresh fruits and vegetables as young adults were much less likely to have plaque build-up in their arteries 20 years later compared with those who consumed lower amounts of these foods, according to research to be presented at the American College of Cardiology’s 63rd Annual Scientific Session. This new finding reinforces the importance of developing healthy eating habits early in life.Previous studies have found that middle-aged adults whose diet consists of a high proportion of fruits and vegetables are less likely to have a heart attack or stroke, but the relationship between fruit and vegetable consumption during young adulthood and heart disease later in life was less clear. To study this concept, researchers evaluated the association between dietary intake of fruits and vegetables in young adults and the presence of coronary artery calcification (CAC) 20 years later. CAC scores, which were obtained using a CT scan, provide a direct estimate of the amount of plaque in the coronary arteries.”It’s an important question because lifestyle behaviors, such as a heart healthy diet, are the foundation of cardiovascular prevention and we need to know what dietary components are most important,” said Michael D. Miedema, M.D., M.P.H., a cardiologist at the Minneapolis Heart Institute, and the lead investigator of the study.Specifically, women who reported consuming the most fruits and vegetables (eight to nine servings a day for a 2,000-calorie diet) in their 20s were 40 percent less likely to have calcified plaque in their arteries in their 40s compared with those who ate the least amount (three to four servings a day) during the same time period. This association persisted even after researchers accounted for other lifestyle behaviors, as well as for their current-day diets, further demonstrating the role dietary patterns at younger ages may play.”These findings confirm the concept that plaque development is a lifelong process, and that process can be slowed down with a healthy diet at a young age,” Miedema said. “This is often when dietary habits are established, so there is value in knowing how the choices we make in early life have lifelong benefits.”Surprisingly, the same benefit did not hold true for men, which warrants further investigation.”Several other studies have also suggested that a diet high in fruits and vegetables is less protective in men, but we do not have a good biological reason for this lack of association,” Miedema said, adding that the study had less power to evaluate men (62.7 percent were female vs. 37.3 percent male).The study included 2,508 participants from the ongoing government-sponsored Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study, which is evaluating how heart disease develops throughout adulthood. CARDIA began in the mid-1980s with a group of men and women 18-30 years of age and has collected extensive data on medical, socioeconomic, psychosocial and behavioral characteristics.At the start of CARDIA (1985-1986), women and men were asked about their consumption of different fruits and vegetables and the number of servings they had eaten in the past month using a semi-quantitative interview food-frequency questionnaire. Researchers then calculated the average number of servings of fruits and vegetables per day and adjusted them to a 2,000-calorie diet. …


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Celiac disease linked to increased risk of coronary artery disease

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People with celiac disease may have a near two-fold increased risk of coronary artery disease compared with the general population, according to research to be presented at the American College of Cardiology’s 63rd Annual Scientific Session.The study is the first to look at the association between celiac disease and coronary artery disease and adds to the evolving understanding of how systemic inflammation and autoimmune processes might influence cardiovascular disease development. Data also showed a slightly higher risk of stroke among people with celiac disease compared to controls.Celiac disease is a chronic inflammatory condition of the digestive system that can damage the small intestine, eventually interfering with the absorption of key nutrients. People with celiac disease are unable to tolerate gluten — a protein found in food such as wheat, rye and barley. Gluten is thought to trigger an immune and inflammatory response in the gut.”People with celiac disease have some persistent low-grade inflammation in the gut that can spill immune mediators into the bloodstream, which can then accelerate the process of atherosclerosis and, in turn, coronary artery disease,” said R.D. Gajulapalli, M.D., clinical associate at the Cleveland Clinic and co-investigator of the study. “Our findings reinforce the idea that chronic inflammation, whether it’s from an infection or a disease, can have an adverse role in coronary artery disease and heart health in general.”Researchers obtained electronic health records of patients from 13 participating health care systems between January 1999 and September 2013. Out of a total of nearly 22.4 million patients, 24,530 were diagnosed with celiac disease. Patients without celiac disease served as controls. There was no difference in smoking status or diabetes rates between the two groups. Those with celiac disease were slightly more likely to have high cholesterol, but less likely to have high blood pressure. …


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Inspiration linked to bipolar disorder risk

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Inspiration has been linked with people at risk of developing bipolar disorder for the first time in a study led by Lancaster University.For generations, artists, musicians, poets and writers have described personal experiences of mania and depression, highlighting the unique association between creativity and bipolar disorder — experiences which are backed up by recent research. But, until now, the specific links between inspiration — the generation of ideas that form the basis of creative work — and bipolar disorder has received little attention.New research by Professor by Steven Jones and Dr Alyson Dodd, of Lancaster University, and Dr June Gruber at Yale University, has shown people at higher risk for developing bipolar disorder consistently report stronger experiences of inspiration than those at lower risk.The paper ‘Development and Validation of a New Multidimensional Measure of Inspiration: Associations with Risk for Bipolar Disorder’, published in PLOS One this week, found a specific link between those people who found their source of inspiration within themselves and risk for bipolar disorder.Professor Jones, co-director of Lancaster University’s Spectrum Centre, said: “It appears that the types of inspiration most related to bipolar vulnerability are those which are self-generated and linked with strong drive for success.”Understanding more about inspiration is important because it is a key aspect of creativity which is highly associated with mental health problems, in particular bipolar disorder. People with bipolar disorder highly value creativity as a positive aspect of their condition. This is relevant to clinicians, as people with bipolar disorder may be unwilling to engage with treatments and therapies which compromise their creativity.”As part of the study, 835 undergraduate students were recruited to complete online questionnaires from both Yale University in the U.S. and Lancaster University in the U.K.They were asked to complete a questionaire which measured their bipolar risk using a widely-used and well-validated 48-item measure which captures episodic shifts in emotion, behaviour, and energy called The Hypomanic Personality Scale (HPS).They also completed a new questionnaire developed by the team which was designed to explore beliefs about inspiration, in particular the sources of inspiration — whether individuals thought it came from within themselves, from others or the wider environment. This measure was called the the EISI (External and Internal Sources of Inspiration) measure.The students who scored highly for a risk of bipolar also consistently scored more highly than the others for levels of inspiration and for inspiration which they judged to have come from themselves.Researchers say, although this pattern was consistent, the effect sizes were relatively modest so, although inspiration and bipolar risk are linked, it is important to explore other variables to get a fuller picture and to conduct further research with individuals with a clinical diagnosis of bipolar disorder.The research team is currently inviting UK-based individuals with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder to take part in an online survey exploring associations between inspiration, mood and recovery. Go to: www.thinkingstyle.spectrumdevelopment.org.uk.Story Source:The above story is based on materials provided by Lancaster University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


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Obesity prevention programs can lower kids" blood pressure, even if they don"t reduce body fat

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One of the serious health consequences of obesity is elevated blood pressure (BP), a particular problem in children because research has found that high BP in children usually follows them into adulthood, carrying with it a wide range of possible negative consequences.Even modest elevations in the BP of adolescents, according to recent research, can pose cardiovascular problems later in life.A systematic review and meta-analysis of published studies of the effect of child obesity intervention programs on blood pressure has found that whether such programs prevented obesity or not, many of them reduced BP in children. It also found that the most effective programs in this regard promoted both healthy eating and physical activity.The study, one of the first of its kind, “Effect of Childhood Obesity Prevention Programs on BP: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” was led by epidemiologist Youfa Wang, MD, PhD, of the University at Buffalo and conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins University, UB and other institutions.It was published online in the journal Circulation on Feb. 19, 2014 in advance of print publication.Wang said, “Of the 28 obesity interventions with complete data that we analyzed, 13 (46 percent) had a favorable effect on both adiposity and BP and 11 interventions (39 percent) had a significant effect on the reduction of BP, even if they did not affect adiposity. “It is important to identify obesity intervention programs that can help children develop healthy lifestyles and keep BP at an optimal level,” he says, “because these programs help them avoid many long-term health consequences.”Wang’s research team, now based at UB, is working on projects in the U.S. and abroad funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that aim to assess the additional benefits of obesity prevention programs for children and to develop the most effective programs possible.The team also is using transnational comparison studies to analyze factors suspected of contributing to the global obesity epidemic.Story Source:The above story is based on materials provided by University at Buffalo. The original article was written by Pat Donovan. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


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Carbohydrate digestion and obesity strongly linked

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New research indicates that obesity in the general population may be genetically linked to how our bodies digest carbohydrates.Published today in the journal Nature Genetics, the study investigated the relationship between body weight and a gene called AMY1, which is responsible for an enzyme present in our saliva known as salivary amylase. This enzyme is the first to be encountered by food when it enters the mouth, and it begins the process of starch digestion that then continues in the gut.People usually have two copies of each gene, but in some regions of our DNA there can be variability in the number of copies a person carries, which is known as copy number variation. The number of copies of AMY1 can be highly variable between people, and it is believed that higher numbers of copies of the salivary amylase gene have evolved in response to a shift towards diets containing more starch since prehistoric times.Researchers from Imperial College London, in collaboration with other international institutions, looked at the number of copies of the gene AMY1 present in the DNA of thousands of people from the UK, France, Sweden and Singapore. They found that people who carried a low number of copies of the salivary amylase gene were at greater risk of obesity.The chance of being obese for people with less than four copies of the AMY1 gene was approximately eight times higher than in those with more than nine copies of this gene. The researchers estimated that with every additional copy of the salivary amylase gene there was approximately a 20 per cent decrease in the odds of becoming obese.Professor Philippe Froguel, Chair in Genomic Medicine in the School of Public Health at Imperial College London, and one of the lead authors on the study, said: “I think this is an important discovery because it suggests that how we digest starch and how the end products from the digestion of complex carbohydrates behave in the gut could be important factors in the risk of obesity. Future research is needed to understand whether or not altering the digestion of starchy food might improve someone’s ability to lose weight, or prevent a person from becoming obese. We are also interested in whether there is a link between this genetic variation and people’s risk of other metabolic disorders such as diabetes, as people with a low number of copies of the salivary amylase gene may also be glucose intolerant.”Dr Mario Falchi, also from Imperial’s School of Public Health and first author of the study, said: “Previous genetic studies investigating obesity have tended to identify variations in genes that act in the brain and often result in differences in appetite, whereas our finding is related to how the body physically handles digestion of carbohydrates. We are now starting to develop a clearer picture of a combination of genetic factors affecting psychological and metabolic processes that contribute to people’s chances of becoming obese. This should ultimately help us to find better ways of tackling obesity.”Dr Julia El-Sayed Moustafa, another lead author from Imperial’s School of Public Health, said: “Previous studies have found rare genetic variations causing extreme forms of obesity, but because they occur in only a small number of people, they explained very little of the differences in body weight we see in the population. On the other hand, research on more common genetic variations that increase risk of obesity in the general population have so far generally found only a modest effect on obesity risk. …


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Astronauts" hearts become more spherical in space

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New findings from a study of 12 astronauts show the heart becomes more spherical when exposed to long periods of microgravity in space, a change that could lead to cardiac problems, according to research to be presented at the American College of Cardiology’s 63rd Annual Scientific Session.With implications for an eventual manned mission to Mars, the findings represent an important step toward understanding how a spaceflight of 18 months or more could affect astronauts’ heart health.”The heart doesn’t work as hard in space, which can cause a loss of muscle mass,” said James Thomas, M.D., Moore Chair of Cardiovascular Imaging and Lead Scientist for Ultrasound at NASA, and senior author of the study. “That can have serious consequences after the return to Earth, so we’re looking into whether there are measures that can be taken to prevent or counteract that loss.”The researchers say that knowing the amount and type of exercise astronauts need to perform to keep the heart healthy is going to be very important to guarantee their safety on a long flight like a mission to Mars. Thomas adds that exercise regimens developed for astronauts could also be used to help maintain heart health in people on Earth who have severe physical limitations, such as people on extended bed rest or those with heart failure.The research team trained astronauts to take images of their hearts using ultrasound machines installed on the International Space Station. Twelve astronauts participated, providing data on heart shape before, during and after spaceflight.The results show the heart in space becomes more spherical by a factor of 9.4 percent, a transformation similar to what scientists had predicted with sophisticated mathematical models developed for the project. By validating those models, the study could also lead to a better understanding of common cardiovascular conditions in patients on Earth.”The models predicted the changes we observed in the astronauts almost exactly. It gives us confidence that we can move ahead and start using these models for more clinically important applications on Earth, such as to predict what happens to the heart under different stresses,” Thomas said.The team is now working to generalize the models to analyze such conditions as ischemic heart disease, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and valvular heart disease.”The models could help us simulate those pathologies to understand the impact on cardiac function,” Thomas said.The astronauts’ more spherical heart shape appears to be temporary, with the heart returning to its normal elongated shape shortly after the return to Earth. The more spherical shape experienced in space may mean the heart is performing less efficiently, although the long-term health effects of the shape change are not known.Spaceflight is known to cause a variety of cardiac effects. Upon return to Earth, astronauts commonly become lightheaded or pass out in a condition known as orthostatic hypotension, in which the body experiences a sudden drop in blood pressure when standing up. Arrhythmias have also been observed during space travel, and there is concern that the radiation astronauts are exposed to in space may accelerate atherosclerosis. The research team is continuing to examine these and other potential cardiovascular effects.Story Source:The above story is based on materials provided by American College of Cardiology. …


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Four in 10 infants lack strong parental attachments

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In a study of 14,000 U.S. children, 40 percent lack strong emotional bonds — what psychologists call “secure attachment” — with their parents that are crucial to success later in life, according to a new report. The researchers found that these children are more likely to face educational and behavioral problems.In a report published by Sutton Trust, a London-based institute that has published more than 140 research papers on education and social mobility, researchers from Princeton University, Columbia University, the London School of Economics and Political Science and the University of Bristol found that infants under the age of three who do not form strong bonds with their mothers or fathers are more likely to be aggressive, defiant and hyperactive as adults. These bonds, or secure attachments, are formed through early parental care, such as picking up a child when he or she cries or holding and reassuring a child.”When parents tune in to and respond to their children’s needs and are a dependable source of comfort, those children learn how to manage their own feeling and behaviors,” said Sophie Moullin, a joint doctoral candidate studying at Princeton’s Department of Sociology and the Office of Population Research, which is based at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. “These secure attachments to their mothers and fathers provide these children with a base from which they can thrive.”Written by Moullin, Jane Waldfogel from Columbia University and the London School of Economics and Political Science and Elizabeth Washbrook from the University of Bristol, the report uses data collected by the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, a nationally representative U.S. study of 14,000 children born in 2001. The researchers also reviewed more than 100 academic studies.Their analysis shows that about 60 percent of children develop strong attachments to their parents, which are formed through simple actions, such as holding a baby lovingly and responding to the baby’s needs. Such actions support children’s social and emotional development, which, in turn, strengthens their cognitive development, the researchers write. These children are more likely to be resilient to poverty, family instability, parental stress and depression. Additionally, if boys growing up in poverty have strong parental attachments, they are two and a half times less likely to display behavior problems at school.The approximately 40 percent who lack secure attachments, on the other hand, are more likely to have poorer language and behavior before entering school. …


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