The News:
The Science of Sleep
Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes explores the latest findings in sleep research
Human beings spend on average one third of our lives asleep. We know we need to sleep, but most of us have never really given a whole lot of thought to why. Why do we spend seven or eight hours a night immobile and unconscious? What really happens inside our brains and bodies while we're sleeping?
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Friday, June 13, 2008
Research News: U.S. Mortality Drops Sharply in 2006
The News:
U.S. Mortality Drops Sharply in 2006
By David BrownThe Washington Post
Article Last Updated: 06/12/2008 01:19:52 AM MDT
WASHINGTON — Americans' life expectancy reached a record high of 78.1 years in 2006, with disparities among ethnic groups and between the sexes generally narrowing, according to government data released Wednesday. The death rates from most diseases went down, with influenza mortality falling steeply and AIDS mortality marking its 10th straight year of decline. Infant mortality in 2006 also fell from the previous year, continuing a trend stretching back nearly 50 years.
The Research:
Read the research behind this story at the National Center for Health Statistics.
U.S. Mortality Drops Sharply in 2006
By David BrownThe Washington Post
Article Last Updated: 06/12/2008 01:19:52 AM MDT
WASHINGTON — Americans' life expectancy reached a record high of 78.1 years in 2006, with disparities among ethnic groups and between the sexes generally narrowing, according to government data released Wednesday. The death rates from most diseases went down, with influenza mortality falling steeply and AIDS mortality marking its 10th straight year of decline. Infant mortality in 2006 also fell from the previous year, continuing a trend stretching back nearly 50 years.
The Research:
Read the research behind this story at the National Center for Health Statistics.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Research News: Herb no help for ADHD
The News:
Herb no help for ADHD
Government-funded study tested St. John's Wort against placebo
By Carla K. Johnson The Associated Press
CHICAGO — Children and teens with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder fared no better on St. John's wort than they did on dummy pills in a government study, another blow for herbal supplements. St. John's wort, pine bark extract and blue-green algae are among commonly used herbal treatments for children with ADHD. They appeal to parents who want to avoid stimulants such as Ritalin and other drugs used to help children control their behavior.
The Research:
Read the research behind this story in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Herb no help for ADHD
Government-funded study tested St. John's Wort against placebo
By Carla K. Johnson The Associated Press
CHICAGO — Children and teens with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder fared no better on St. John's wort than they did on dummy pills in a government study, another blow for herbal supplements. St. John's wort, pine bark extract and blue-green algae are among commonly used herbal treatments for children with ADHD. They appeal to parents who want to avoid stimulants such as Ritalin and other drugs used to help children control their behavior.
The Research:
Read the research behind this story in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Research News: Patterns: A Video Game, an M.R.I. and What Men’s Brains Do
The News:
Patterns: A Video Game, an M.R.I. and What Men’s Brains Do
By ERIC NAGOURNEY
Published: February 19, 2008
Why does it often seem that men enjoy playing video games more than women? Perhaps because they do. A new study finds that when men play the games, a part of the brain involved in feelings of reward and addiction becomes much more activated than it does in women.
The Research:
Read the research behind this story in the Journal of Psychiatric Research.
Patterns: A Video Game, an M.R.I. and What Men’s Brains Do
By ERIC NAGOURNEY
Published: February 19, 2008
Why does it often seem that men enjoy playing video games more than women? Perhaps because they do. A new study finds that when men play the games, a part of the brain involved in feelings of reward and addiction becomes much more activated than it does in women.
The Research:
Read the research behind this story in the Journal of Psychiatric Research.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Research news: Children grows up healthier in enriched foster care
The News:
Children Grow Up Healthier in Enriched Foster Care
by Michelle Trudeau.
All Things Considered, June 6, 2008 · There are big, long-term health payoffs in mental and physical well-being when foster-care services to children are enhanced, a new study suggests.
Kids generally go into foster care as a last resort: when maltreatment or neglect at home is extreme and unremitting. Such abuse can have long-term consequences on the mental and physical health of children as they grow up.
A new study, published in the latest edition of the Archives of General Psychiatry, looked at whether more enriched and supportive foster care can help mitigate some of the long-term problems foster kids face. Read on...
The Research:
Read the research behind this story in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
Children Grow Up Healthier in Enriched Foster Care
by Michelle Trudeau.
All Things Considered, June 6, 2008 · There are big, long-term health payoffs in mental and physical well-being when foster-care services to children are enhanced, a new study suggests.
Kids generally go into foster care as a last resort: when maltreatment or neglect at home is extreme and unremitting. Such abuse can have long-term consequences on the mental and physical health of children as they grow up.
A new study, published in the latest edition of the Archives of General Psychiatry, looked at whether more enriched and supportive foster care can help mitigate some of the long-term problems foster kids face. Read on...
The Research:
Read the research behind this story in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Research news: Mountains could have growth spurts
The News:
Mountains could have growth spurts
Posted 6:06 pm EDT
WASHINGTON, Jun. 5, 2008 (Reuters) — The Andes Mountains may have growth spurts, doubling their height in as little as 2 million to 4 million years, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.
Their findings suggest that current theories about plate tectonics -- the process that creates and moves continents, giving rise to mountain ranges -- may need updating.
Geologists had estimated that the mountain system, which extends the length of western South America, rose gradually over the past 40 million years.
Mountains that grow this fast might affect climate and evolution, said Carmala Garzione, an associate professor of geology at the University of Rochester in New York.
The 4,400-mile-(7,000-km)long range is tall and jagged in many parts, with its highest peak reaching 22,800 feet (6,900 meters) and an average height of 13,000 feet.
It was formed through plate tectonics, specifically the subduction of a large sheet of crust called the Nazca plate beneath the South American plate. This process, still ongoing, causes earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
Writing in the journal Science, Garzione and colleagues said they had studied sediments to determine that the Andes rose slowly for tens of millions of years, then suddenly lifted much more quickly between 10 million and 6 million years ago. Read on...
The Research:
Read the research behind this story in the journal Science.
Mountains could have growth spurts
Posted 6:06 pm EDT
WASHINGTON, Jun. 5, 2008 (Reuters) — The Andes Mountains may have growth spurts, doubling their height in as little as 2 million to 4 million years, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.
Their findings suggest that current theories about plate tectonics -- the process that creates and moves continents, giving rise to mountain ranges -- may need updating.
Geologists had estimated that the mountain system, which extends the length of western South America, rose gradually over the past 40 million years.
Mountains that grow this fast might affect climate and evolution, said Carmala Garzione, an associate professor of geology at the University of Rochester in New York.
The 4,400-mile-(7,000-km)long range is tall and jagged in many parts, with its highest peak reaching 22,800 feet (6,900 meters) and an average height of 13,000 feet.
It was formed through plate tectonics, specifically the subduction of a large sheet of crust called the Nazca plate beneath the South American plate. This process, still ongoing, causes earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
Writing in the journal Science, Garzione and colleagues said they had studied sediments to determine that the Andes rose slowly for tens of millions of years, then suddenly lifted much more quickly between 10 million and 6 million years ago. Read on...
The Research:
Read the research behind this story in the journal Science.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Research news: Tiny ring around the callers: Study shows few venture far from home
The News:
Tiny ring around the callers: Study shows few venture far from home
By The Associated Press
Article Last Updated: 06/04/2008 09:15:48 PM MDT
WASHINGTON — Researchers secretly tracked the locations of 100,000 people outside the U.S. through their cellphone use and concluded that most people rarely stray more than a few miles from home.
The first-of-its-kind study by Northeastern University raises privacy and ethical questions for its monitoring methods, which would be illegal in the United States.
It also yielded somewhat surprising results that reveal how little people move around in their daily lives. Nearly three- quarters of those studied mainly stayed within a 20-mile-diameter circle for half a year.
The scientists would not say where the study was done, describing the location only as an industrialized nation.
Researchers used cellphone towers to track individuals' locations whenever they made or received phone calls and text messages over six months. In a second set of records, researchers took 206 cellphones that had tracking devices and got their locations every two hours for a week.
The study was based on cellphone records from a private company, whose name also was not disclosed. Study co-author Cesar Hidalgo, a physics researcher at Northeastern, said he and his colleagues didn't know the individual phone numbers.
That type of nonconsensual tracking would be illegal in the United States, according to Rob Kenny, a spokesman for the Federal Communications Commission. Consensual tracking, however, is legal and even marketed as a special feature by some U.S. cellphone providers.
The study, published today in Nature, opens up the field of human-tracking for science and calls attention to what experts said is an emerging issue of locational privacy. Read on...
The Research:
Read the research behind this story in the journal Nature.
Tiny ring around the callers: Study shows few venture far from home
By The Associated Press
Article Last Updated: 06/04/2008 09:15:48 PM MDT
WASHINGTON — Researchers secretly tracked the locations of 100,000 people outside the U.S. through their cellphone use and concluded that most people rarely stray more than a few miles from home.
The first-of-its-kind study by Northeastern University raises privacy and ethical questions for its monitoring methods, which would be illegal in the United States.
It also yielded somewhat surprising results that reveal how little people move around in their daily lives. Nearly three- quarters of those studied mainly stayed within a 20-mile-diameter circle for half a year.
The scientists would not say where the study was done, describing the location only as an industrialized nation.
Researchers used cellphone towers to track individuals' locations whenever they made or received phone calls and text messages over six months. In a second set of records, researchers took 206 cellphones that had tracking devices and got their locations every two hours for a week.
The study was based on cellphone records from a private company, whose name also was not disclosed. Study co-author Cesar Hidalgo, a physics researcher at Northeastern, said he and his colleagues didn't know the individual phone numbers.
That type of nonconsensual tracking would be illegal in the United States, according to Rob Kenny, a spokesman for the Federal Communications Commission. Consensual tracking, however, is legal and even marketed as a special feature by some U.S. cellphone providers.
The study, published today in Nature, opens up the field of human-tracking for science and calls attention to what experts said is an emerging issue of locational privacy. Read on...
The Research:
Read the research behind this story in the journal Nature.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Research news: For barn swallows, feathers make the man, says CU-Boulder study
The News:
For barn swallows, feathers make the man, says CU-Boulder study
New study has implications for the ecology and evolution of wildlife signaling
University of Colorado at Boulder Assistant Professor Rebecca Safran of the ecology and evolutionary biology department retrieves a North American barn swallow from a mist net for marking and release.
A new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder has shown the testosterone of male North American barn swallows skyrocketed early in the breeding season when their breast colors were artificially enhanced by researchers, indicating the clothes -- or in this case, the feathers -- make the man.
The swallows, whose breast feathers were darkened to a deep red known to be most attractive to females, likely had more testosterone racing through their bodies because of amorous interactions with the opposite sex and more run-ins with jealous males, said CU-Boulder Assistant Professor Rebecca Safran, lead study author. The jump in testosterone was unexpected because it was observed at the time in the breeding cycle when levels of sex steroids like testosterone are typically declining, she said.
"A simple change in appearance had striking physiological consequences for these barn swallow males, which was a big surprise," said Safran. "The experimental manipulation didn't just improve their looks in the eyes of the females, it actually changed their body chemistry. The relationship between a male's physiology and the traits that win him mates is a lot more flexible than we had imagined."
A paper on the subject is being published in the June 3 issue of Current Biology. Co-authors on the study include James Adelman and Michaela Hau of Princeton University and Kevin McGraw of Arizona State University. The two-year study was funded primarily by the National Science Foundation.
The new study is the first to show significant feedback between physical appearance and physiology in birds, and has implications for better understanding the ecology and evolution of physical signals such as feather color, she said. Read on...
The Research:
Read the research behind this story in the journal Current Biology.
For barn swallows, feathers make the man, says CU-Boulder study
New study has implications for the ecology and evolution of wildlife signaling
University of Colorado at Boulder Assistant Professor Rebecca Safran of the ecology and evolutionary biology department retrieves a North American barn swallow from a mist net for marking and release.
A new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder has shown the testosterone of male North American barn swallows skyrocketed early in the breeding season when their breast colors were artificially enhanced by researchers, indicating the clothes -- or in this case, the feathers -- make the man.
The swallows, whose breast feathers were darkened to a deep red known to be most attractive to females, likely had more testosterone racing through their bodies because of amorous interactions with the opposite sex and more run-ins with jealous males, said CU-Boulder Assistant Professor Rebecca Safran, lead study author. The jump in testosterone was unexpected because it was observed at the time in the breeding cycle when levels of sex steroids like testosterone are typically declining, she said.
"A simple change in appearance had striking physiological consequences for these barn swallow males, which was a big surprise," said Safran. "The experimental manipulation didn't just improve their looks in the eyes of the females, it actually changed their body chemistry. The relationship between a male's physiology and the traits that win him mates is a lot more flexible than we had imagined."
A paper on the subject is being published in the June 3 issue of Current Biology. Co-authors on the study include James Adelman and Michaela Hau of Princeton University and Kevin McGraw of Arizona State University. The two-year study was funded primarily by the National Science Foundation.
The new study is the first to show significant feedback between physical appearance and physiology in birds, and has implications for better understanding the ecology and evolution of physical signals such as feather color, she said. Read on...
The Research:
Read the research behind this story in the journal Current Biology.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Research news: Good news in our DNA--Defects you can fix with vitamins and minerals
The News:
Good News In Our DNA: Defects You Can Fix With Vitamins And Minerals
ScienceDaily (Jun. 3, 2008) — As the cost of sequencing a single human genome drops rapidly, with one company predicting a price of $100 per person in five years, soon the only reason not to look at your "personal genome" will be fear of what bad news lies in your genes.
University of California, Berkeley, scientists, however, have found a welcome reason to delve into your genetic heritage: to find the slight genetic flaws that can be fixed with remedies as simple as vitamin or mineral supplements.
"I'm looking for the good news in the human genome," said Jasper Rine, UC Berkeley professor of molecular and cell biology.
"Headlines for the last 20 years have really been about the triumph of biomedical research in finding disease genes, which is biologically interesting, genetically important and frightening to people who get this information," Rine said. "I became obsessed with trying to decide if there is some other class of information that will make people want to look at their genome sequence."
What Rine and colleagues found and report in the online early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) is that there are many genetic differences that make people's enzymes less efficient than normal, and that simple supplementation with vitamins can often restore some of these deficient enzymes to full working order. Read on...
The Research:
Read the research behind this story in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (click on Full Text PDF at top of right hand column)
Good News In Our DNA: Defects You Can Fix With Vitamins And Minerals
ScienceDaily (Jun. 3, 2008) — As the cost of sequencing a single human genome drops rapidly, with one company predicting a price of $100 per person in five years, soon the only reason not to look at your "personal genome" will be fear of what bad news lies in your genes.
University of California, Berkeley, scientists, however, have found a welcome reason to delve into your genetic heritage: to find the slight genetic flaws that can be fixed with remedies as simple as vitamin or mineral supplements.
"I'm looking for the good news in the human genome," said Jasper Rine, UC Berkeley professor of molecular and cell biology.
"Headlines for the last 20 years have really been about the triumph of biomedical research in finding disease genes, which is biologically interesting, genetically important and frightening to people who get this information," Rine said. "I became obsessed with trying to decide if there is some other class of information that will make people want to look at their genome sequence."
What Rine and colleagues found and report in the online early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) is that there are many genetic differences that make people's enzymes less efficient than normal, and that simple supplementation with vitamins can often restore some of these deficient enzymes to full working order. Read on...
The Research:
Read the research behind this story in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (click on Full Text PDF at top of right hand column)
Monday, June 2, 2008
Research news: Golf prolongs life, Swedish study finds
The News:
Golf Prolongs Life, Swedish Study Finds
ScienceDaily (Jun. 2, 2008) — Golf can be a good investment for the health, according to a new study from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet. The death rate for golfers is 40 per cent lower than for other people of the same sex, age and socioeconomic status, which correspond to a 5 year increase in life expectancy. Golfers with a low handicap are the safest.
It is a well-known fact that exercise is good for the health, but the expected health gains of particular activities are still largely unknown. A team of researchers from Karolinska Institutet has now presented a study of the health effects of golf -- a low-intensity form of exercise in which over 600,000 Swedes engage.
The study, which is published in Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, is based on data from 300,000 Swedish golfers and shows that golf has beneficial health effects. The death rate amongst golfers is 40 per cent lower than the rest of the population, which equates to an increased life expectancy of five years. Read on...
The Research:
Read the research behind this story in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports
Golf Prolongs Life, Swedish Study Finds
ScienceDaily (Jun. 2, 2008) — Golf can be a good investment for the health, according to a new study from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet. The death rate for golfers is 40 per cent lower than for other people of the same sex, age and socioeconomic status, which correspond to a 5 year increase in life expectancy. Golfers with a low handicap are the safest.
It is a well-known fact that exercise is good for the health, but the expected health gains of particular activities are still largely unknown. A team of researchers from Karolinska Institutet has now presented a study of the health effects of golf -- a low-intensity form of exercise in which over 600,000 Swedes engage.
The study, which is published in Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, is based on data from 300,000 Swedish golfers and shows that golf has beneficial health effects. The death rate amongst golfers is 40 per cent lower than the rest of the population, which equates to an increased life expectancy of five years. Read on...
The Research:
Read the research behind this story in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports
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