TORONTO -- Eating tree nuts appears to help reduce two of the five markers for metabolic syndrome, a group of factors that raise the risk for heart disease and other health problems such as diabetes and strokes, a new research paper says. The paper found a "modest decrease" in blood fats known as triglycerides and blood sugars among people who added tree nuts to their diets compared to those who ate a control diet. The paper, by Dr. John Sievenpiper, a physician and researcher in the Clinical Nutrition and Risk Factor Modification Centre of St. Michael's Hospital, was ...

The Milky Way is smaller than astronomers previously thought, according to new research. For the first time, scientists have been able to precisely measure the mass of the galaxy that contains our solar system. Researchers have found that the Milky Way is approximately half the weight of a neighbouring galaxy – known as Andromeda – which has a similar structure to our own. The Milky Way and Andromeda are the two largest in a region of galaxies which astronomers call the Local Group. Scientists say that Andromeda's extra weight must be present in the form of ...

A 'kitemark' that identifies randomized-controlled trials reviewed by specially trained peer reviewers would improve public trust in the robustness of clinical trials, according to an opinion piece in the open access journal BMC Medicine. Jigisha Patel, BioMed Central's Medical Editor argues that peer review should be recognized as a professional skill in the clinical medical field. The article was openly peer reviewed and the reports published alongside, as is the case for all BMC Medicine articles. Peer review and its effectiveness is the subject of much heated debate ...

Astronomers at the University of British Columbia have collaborated with international researchers to calculate the precise mass of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies, dispelling the notion that the two galaxies have similar masses. While it was previously thought that the two galaxies weighed the same because of their similar size and structure, researchers found that neighboring Andromeda is about twice as heavy as our own Milky Way. "Most of the weight of these galaxies is present in the form of invisible dark matter," says Yin-Zhe Ma, a postdoctoral fellow in ...

PITTSBURGH—Does the Milky Way look fat in this picture? Has Andromeda been taking skinny selfies? It turns out the way some astrophysicists have been studying our galaxy made it appear that the Milky Way might be more massive than it's neighbor down the street, Andromeda. Not true, says a study published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society by an international group of researchers, including Matthew Walker of Carnegie Mellon University's McWilliams Center for Cosmology. In the paper, they demonstrate a new, more accurate method for measuring ...

These results conflict with a recent study published in BMJ's Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health suggesting that seven or more daily portions of fruits and vegetables were linked to lowest risk of death. There is growing evidence that increasing fruit and vegetable consumption is related to a lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer. However, the results are not entirely consistent. So a team of researchers based in China and the United States decided to examine the association between fruit and vegetable intake and risk of all-cause, cardiovascular, ...

Folate is a naturally occurring form of vitamin B found in food, while folic acid is synthetically produced and used in fortified foods and supplements. It is well known that taking folic acid before and during early pregnancy reduces the risk of neural tube defects like spina bifida. The current recommended dose is 400 ìg (micrograms) a day, but it is still not clear exactly how much daily folic acid is needed to prevent neural tube defects. A previous study carried out in Ireland showed the risk of a having a child with a neural tube defect increased as red blood ...

Gillian Prue, from the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Queen's University of Belfast, says that the human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is common in men and can lead to genital warts and the development of some head and neck, anal or penile cancers. She says incidence of this has increased in the past two decades with HPV causing 5% of all human cancers. Since September 2008 a free vaccination has been available for 12-13 year old girls in the UK with a catch up programme for girls up to age 18. Australia, the US, Austria and parts of Canada have introduced a vaccination ...

A study published today [Weds July 30] in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry indicates that middle-aged adults with a history of problem drinking are more than twice as likely to suffer from severe memory impairment in later life. The study highlights the hitherto largely unknown link between harmful patterns of alcohol consumption and problems with memory later in life – problems which may place people at a high risk of developing dementia. The study was carried out by researchers from the University of Exeter Medical School with support from the NIHR Collaboration ...

7/29/2014, Seattle, WA. Research to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the foremost society for research into all aspects of eating and drinking behavior, finds that maternal obesity leads to marked changes in the offspring's gastrointestinal microflora composition and gastrointestinal function. The gastrointestinal microflora consists of multiple species of microorganisms that live in the digestive tracts of animals and assists the host in digestion. An imbalance in an individual's microflora is suspected to ...

The failure of some obese individuals to generate or detect adequate signals to stop eating has been frequently been reported in medical science. Researchers at the University of Leeds, UK have devised a simple metric to quantify satiety responsiveness - Satiety Quotient (SQ) – and are applying it to their research to find out why some people struggle to manage their weight and whether certain foods may help to amplify sensations of fullness. In an experiment at the University of Leeds, researchers used the SQ in conjunction with different amounts of whole raw almonds ...

7/29/2014, Seattle, WA. Our brain's response to the sight of food appears to be driven more by how low our blood sugar level is at the moment than our upbringing or genetics, researchers said at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior. "The finding suggest our brains have a way to override our genetic inheritance, upbringing and habits to respond to our immediate nutritional needs," said Dr. Ellen Schur, associate professor of medicine at the University of Washington. In the study, Schur and UW Medicine colleagues at Harborview Medical Center, ...

7/29/2014, Seattle, WA. Research to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the foremost society for research into all aspects of eating and drinking behavior, finds that daily consumption of beverages sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup or sucrose can impair the ability to learn and remember information, particularly when consumption occurs during adolescence. Both adult and adolescent rats were given daily access to sugar-sweetened beverages that mirror sugar concentrations found in common soft drinks. Adult rats ...

7/29/2014, Seattle, WA. Research to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the foremost society for research into all aspects of eating and drinking behaviors, finds that the younger a woman is when she goes on her first diet, the more likely she is to experience several negative health outcomes later in life. Dieting is very common among girls and young women; however, people often fail to consider the long-term consequences of weight-loss diets, particularly in those who begin dieting at a young age. A team led ...

7/29/2014, Seattle, WA. Research to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the foremost society for research into all aspects of eating and drinking behavior, describes a way that brain chemistry may make some people notice food more easily, which can tempt overeating even in people who are not overweight. Dopamine activity in the striatum, an area of the brain sensitive to food reward, was linked to how quickly men noticed a food picture hidden among neutral pictures. In turn, the men who quickly noticed food pictures ...

7/29/2014, Seatle, WA. Research to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the foremost society for research into all aspects of eating and drinking behavior, suggests that the amount time parents spend on food preparation at home influences children's food intake decisions made in the laboratory without parental supervision. "In general, research shows that children tend to eat inadequate amounts of nutrient-rich foods while eating large amounts of sugary and fatty foods," Shehan said. "It's encouraging to see that ...

Seattle, WA. 7/29/20134. New research by academics in the University of Bristol's Nutrition and Behaviour Unit (NBU) has looked into whether we take liquid calories into account when planning meals. The research, to be presented at the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior Conference (SSIB 2014) in Seattle, USA this week [29 July to 2 August], argues that we do. The team was led by Professor Jeff Brunstrom, and is based in the School of Experimental Psychology. As part of a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) grant, the researchers looked ...

Going to the hospital for a heart attack during evenings, weekends and holidays increases your risk of dying 13 percent compared with people arriving during workday hours, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes. Every year, more than 250,000 people experience an ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), the most severe type of heart attack caused by a complete blockage of blood flow to the heart. To prevent death, it's critical to restore blood flow as quickly as possible by surgically opening ...

LEBANON, NH (July 29, 2014) – Using quality improvement measures in eight of the 10 hospitals in the Northern New England Cardiovascular Disease Study Group, researchers have found a way to reduce kidney injury in patients undergoing a procedure with contrast dye. Currently, 7-15 percent of these patients who undergo a coronary stent procedure with contrast-dye end up with kidney injury, which can result in death or rapid decline in kidney function leading to temporary or permanent dialysis, says a study published in the July issue of Circulation Cardiovascular Quality ...

NASA infrared satellite data revealed that Tropical Storm Halong is surrounded by strong thunderstorms and an eye appears to be developing. When NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Storm Halong on July 29 at 03:29 UTC (July 28 at 11:29 p.m. EDT) the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument captured data on the cloud cover. The infrared data showed very cold, high thunderstorm cloud top temperatures of powerful storms surrounding the center, with what appears to be an eye developing. Microwave satellite data also shows a small eye, with tightly-curved bands of ...

July 29, 2014 – For survivors of severe combat injuries threatening more than one limb, reconstructive surgical procedures using tissue flaps have a good record of safety and effectiveness in avoiding amputation, reports a paper in the August issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). Experience with multiple limb salvage procedures in solders injured in Iraq and Afghanistan shows good success rates, with no increase in complications compared to single-flap techniques, report Dr. Ian Valerio ...

July 29, 2014 – Advertising claims for cosmetic procedures using stem cells are running far ahead of the scientific evidence for safety and effectiveness, according to a review in the August issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). "Stem cells offer tremendous potential, but the marketplace is saturated with unsubstantiated and sometimes fraudulent claims that may place patients at risk," write Dr Michael T. Longaker of Stanford University Medical Center and colleagues. 'Worrying advertisements' ...

VIDEO: This animation illustrates solar wind charge exchange in action. An atom of interstellar helium (blue) collides with a solar wind ion (red), losing one of its electrons (yellow) to the... Click here for more information. New findings from a NASA-funded instrument have resolved a decades-old puzzle about a fog of low-energy X-rays observed over the entire sky. Thanks to refurbished detectors first flown on a NASA sounding rocket in the 1970s, astronomers have now confirmed ...

NASA technologists have hurdled a number of significant technological challenges in their quest to improve an already revolutionary observing technology originally created for the James Webb Space Telescope. The team, led by Principal Investigator Harvey Moseley, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has demonstrated that electrostatically actuated microshutter arrays — that is, those activated by applying an specific voltage — are as functional as the current technology's magnetically activated arrays. This advance makes them a highly ...

Political scientists have long wondered whether city governments in the U.S. are really responsive to their voters. Aren't local governments simply mired in machine politics, or under the sway of local big-money interests? Does ideology matter? Now a uniquely comprehensive study co-authored by an MIT political scientist has produced a pair of distinctive findings: first, that the policies of city governments do closely match the politics of their citizens, and second, that this occurs regardless of the exact form of government than a city has. That means that urban ...