A worldwide study has shown that physical activity during work and leisure time significantly lowers the risk of heart attacks in both developed and developing countries. Ownership of a car and a television was linked to an increased risk of heart attacks, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. The findings come from the INTERHEART study, a case-control study of over 29,000 people from 262 centres in 52 countries in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Australia, North and South America. It is published online today (Wednesday) in the European Heart Journal ...

An international team of scientists from the Universities of Exeter and Oxford in the UK, University of Sydney (Australia), Aarhus University (Denmark) and Massey University (New Zealand) based their research on the ground beetle, Anchomenus dorsalis, a well-known garden insect that feasts on slugs, aphids, moths, beetle larvae and ants. The team collected female beetles from the wild and split them into two groups in the laboratory. Half of the beetles were offered a choice of foods, some that were high in protein and some that were high in fat. The other half were not ...

It is commonly known that, much like Pavlov's dogs salivating in response to hearing the bell they associate with dinner time, smokers feel cravings and have physiological reactions to pictures they associate with smoking. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Neuroscience has shown that a smoker's cravings can also be trained to non-smoking related stimuli. Classical conditioning experiments link a neutral stimulus, such as a sound or a picture, to an event, like eating or smoking. Higher order, sometimes called second order conditioning, ...

Having a brother or sister with newly diagnosed cancer can be a distressing and difficult time for a child. While most children eventually cope, there can be a period of adjustment when their school work and social functioning suffer. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health shows that a teaching program, designed to improve the child's knowledge about their sibling's disease and to give them coping skills, was able to improve their adjustment and psychological well being in this early time period after ...

Surgeons aged between 35 and 50 years provide the safest care compared with their younger or older colleagues, finds a study published on bmj.com today. The findings raise concerns about ongoing training and motivation of surgeons during their careers. Typically, experts reach their peak performance between the ages of 30 and 50 years or after about 10 years' experience in their specialty, but few studies have measured the association between clinicians' experience and performance. So a team, led by Drs Antoine Duclos and Jean-Christophe Lifante from the University ...

With Christmas over for another year and many people feeling the pinch after overspending, it seems that the solution to their problems will be a little short term financial help. A new company called Paydayloansuk.org.uk has been set up and could help people in this sector to get themselves back on track in the short term. This provider has been set up to give customers financial help quicker than a lot of other companies. By taking customers needs and details quickly, they can help them out without delay. In most straightforward scenarios, money can be available to ...

Giving overweight or obese patients a gut hormone that suppresses appetite leads to clinically beneficial weight loss as well as reduced blood pressure and cholesterol levels, finds a study published on bmj.com today. Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) is a hormone that is secreted from the intestine when we eat. GLP-1 based therapy was recently introduced as a new treatment for patients with type 2 diabetes because of its ability to regulate blood sugar levels. But it also suppresses food intake and appetite, making it an interesting approach in the treatment of obesity. ...

The great variation of a specific form of immune genes makes organ transplants so complicated. On the other hand, we need such a great variability in order to resist infectious diseases. This is why it also plays a major role in the selection of sexual partners. Up until now, the mechanisms for maintaining this standing genetic variation have remained an evolutionary puzzle. In a study of sticklebacks, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, together with colleagues from the Helmholtz Center for Marine Research in Kiel, have now shown ...

January 10, 2012 (PORTLAND, Ore.) — Older women who have lost more than two inches in height face an increased risk of breaking bones and dying, according to a new study published in the January issue of the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research and funded by the National Institutes of Health. The study found that women 65 and older who lost more than two inches over 15 years were 50 percent more likely to both fracture a bone and to die in the subsequent five years, compared to women who lost less than two inches in height. "Most women do lose height as they age, ...

A UC Davis graduate student who is leading a study of the collision of galaxy clusters 5 billion light years away will discuss the team's findings today, Jan. 10, in a press briefing at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas. "A galaxy cluster is like a little universe, because it has the same matter composition as the whole universe," said William Dawson, a Ph.D. candidate in physics. "By studying this little universe, we can learn more about our own." This "little universe" is formally called DLSCL J0916.2+2951 and consists of two ...

For immediate release - January 10 - (Toronto) – In a new study from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), people with schizophrenia showed greater brain activity during tests that induce a brief, mild form of delusional thinking. This effect wasn't seen in a comparison group without schizophrenia. The study appears in the December issue of Biological Psychiatry. "We studied a type of delusion called a delusion of reference, which occurs when people feel that external stimuli such as newspaper articles or strangers' overheard conversations are about them," ...

Handball is one of the top four sports, at least as far as the risk of injury is concerned. In particular, the jump shot frequently causes sprained ankles, tears to the ligaments connecting the bones of the foot and the lower leg. One of the goals of sports science is to minimize sporting injuries while also improving performance. To this end, many trainers and sports scientists are making increasing use of hi-tech methods, such as the computer modelling of moving joints. Virtual ankle To understand why the ankle is so prone to injury during the jump shot, a team ...

Countless mice, rats and rabbits die every year in the name of science – and the situation is getting worse. While German laboratories used some 2.41 million animals for scientific research in 2005, by 2009 this number had grown to 2.79 million. One third were destined for fundamental biology research, and the majority were used for researching diseases and developing medical compounds and devices. People demand medicines that are safe and therapies that are tolerable, but hardly anyone is happy to accept the need for animal testing. This is why scientists have spent years ...

A group of experts has prepared a report on vitamin D supplementation for menopausal women after it was revealed that Europeans have suffered an alarming decrease in their levels of this vitamin. In their opinion, the ideal would be to maintain blood levels above 30 ng/ml. Vitamin D is essential to the immune system and processes such as calcium absorption. "We believe that many diseases can be aggravated by a chronic deficiency of vitamin D," states Faustino R. Pérez-López, researcher at the University of Zaragoza. In particular, this is worse during the menopause as ...

Total Mortgage Services, LLC, a leading mortgage lender, announced today the hiring of Neil Bader as the Company's National Retail Sales Manager. To this important management position, Mr. Bader brings more than 25 years of production, leadership, and entrepreneurship within the mortgage industry. In his new role, Mr. Bader will be responsible for expanding Total Mortgage's successful retail channel, as it continues its nationwide growth. Mr. Bader will be based in Milford, Connecticut and report directly to John Walsh, President of Total Mortgage. "Neil is a focused ...

Daejeon, Republic of Korea, January 10, 2012—Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) announced today that its research team headed by Professor Howon Lee from the IT Convergence Research Institute has developed a technology that will make reading on smartphones and tablet PCs easier than now. The technology, called the "Smart E-book System," allows users of smartphones and tablet PCs to effortlessly flip through the pages of an e-book or cross-reference its contents, just as they would with paper-based books and magazines. Unlike conventional displays ...

A new study supports previous findings that children delivered by cesarean section have an increased risk of developing asthma. The study from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) suggests that children delivered by cesarean section have an increased risk of asthma at the age of three. This was particularly seen among children without a hereditary tendency to asthma and allergies. Data from more than 37 000 participants in the MoBa study were used to study the relationship between delivery method and the development of lower respiratory tract infections, ...

Fusion plasma researchers at the University of Warwick have teamed up with Cambridge neuroscientists to apply their expertise developed to study inaccessible fusion plasmas in order to significantly improve the understanding of the data obtained from non-invasive study of the fast dynamics of networks in the human brain. Unless they undertake invasive techniques, neuroscientists are limited to external sensing when studying live brains. One key method the researchers turn to is magnetoencephalography (MEG) in which sensors measure the tiny magnetic fields outside the ...

A new study by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy illustrates a disconnect between government funding of biomedical research by young investigators and a novel standard by which to judge it: the Nobel Prize. The study found the average age of biomedical researchers getting their first grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2008 was 42. Over the past 30 years, the average age of Nobel winners when they performed their groundbreaking research was 41. That should trouble those concerned about the United States' standing as a biomedical powerhouse, ...

Researchers at Linköping University in Sweden are now launching a plan to effectively treat psoriasis. An estimated 125 million people worldwide suffer from the difficult to treat disease, which manifests itself in scaly and often itchy patches on the skin. The reason is that cells divide without restraint as new blood vessels form in the deeper layers of the skin. An important component is the psoriasin protein (S100A7), which are abundant in psoriasis-affected skin but rarely in normal skin. The same protein is also assumed to be a factor in the development of breast ...

Van Trader, leading website in the UK for the purchase and sale of used vans, launched a competition in collaboration with Talksport Radio, 1089/1053am, giving fans and listeners the chance to win a new van. The competition, sponsored by the sister company of the network of online car dealers offer new and used cars, Auto Trader, is an airborne "Van in the Van" questionnaire on the basis of famous football players with the name of ... Van. The listener who knows their Van stuff how to win Van Nistelrooy Van Persie will come out with a Citroen Berlingo of more ...

Boston, MA – Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) have successfully tested a controllable endoscopic capsule, inspired by science fiction, that has the ability to "swim" through the body and could provide clinicians with unprecedented control when photographing the inside of the human body. The capsule is designed to be swallowed like a pill and can be equipped with a camera. Once inside the patient's digestive track, a doctor can "steer" the capsule through the body using an MRI machine, photograph specific areas of interest, and view those pictures wirelessly. With ...

When nerve cells communicate with one another, specialized receptor molecules on their surfaces play a central role in relaying signals between them. A collaborative venture involving teams of chemists based at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich and the University of California in Berkeley has now succeeded in converting an intrinsically "blind" receptor molecule into a photoreceptor. They achieved this feat by using molecular genetic techniques to attach what amounts to a light-controlled chemical "switch" to a macromolecular receptor that is normally activated ...

OzeVision Web Hosting snatches the distinction of ranking 10th amongst the "Top 25 Most Poplar" web hosting companies in the category "Australian Web Hosting Directory" by WebHostDir.com. The awards page can be viewed at: http://ozevision.com/web_hosting/top-25-most-popular-webhosting-awards.html WebHostDir.com appraise the 25 most liked companies in the category "Australian Web Hosting Directory" on monthly basis. The "25 Most Popular List" is based on the number of online votes a webhost company receives and the number of ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — The Eastern view of parenting, as defined by best-selling author and self-described "tiger mother" Amy Chua, is that children should be pushed to excel at all costs. Parents needn't worry about their happiness, she argues, only their success. But now a Michigan State University scholar is refuting that theory. In her research, Desiree Baolian Qin – who, like Chua, is a Chinese mother – found that high-achieving Chinese students were more depressed and anxious than their white counterparts. And contrary to the tiger mother philosophy, Qin said, ...