A relatively new treatment for sudden hearing loss that involves injecting steroids into the middle ear appears to work just as well as the current standard of oral steroids, a study by researchers at Johns Hopkins and other institutions suggests. The findings, published in the May 25 Journal of the American Medical Association, could lead to more options for the 1 in 20,000 people who suffer from this often baffling and disabling condition each year. As the name implies, sudden hearing loss (SHL) is a dramatic loss of hearing that occurs over a short period, usually ...

TEMPE (May 24, 2011) - Schools were closed, restaurants shuttered and large public gatherings cancelled. The H1N1 virus was new, and most of the cases occurred among young people. Health professionals and scientists weren't sure at the onset what the world would encounter with the virus. Social distancing measures were enacted in Mexico where the pandemic affected different geographical areas of the country during three distinct waves. During the spring of 2009 when the virus affected the Mexico City area, officials choose to take measures to limit the virus' spread ...

Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine have published new data on why the aging brain is less resilient and less capable of learning from life experiences. The findings provide further insight into the cognitive decline associated with aging and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. The study is published in the May 25 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. The Mount Sinai team evaluated the prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain that controls a wide range of cognitive processes and mediates the highest levels of learning. Nerve cell circuitry in the prefrontal ...

In recent years, the greatest danger on our nation's roads seemed to be the drunk driver. Now, you hear more about people texting while driving than you do drinking and driving. This new bad habit of texting while driving, which is a crime in some states, is taking even more lives and causing even more car accidents than drinking and driving. Studies have been conducted to compare the effects of alcohol on a driver's attention to the act of texting on a driver's attention. The results are remarkable. Texting while driving is riskier than driving under the influence ...

A study of tissue samples from 161 marine mammals that died between 2004 and 2009 in the Pacific Northwest reveals an association between severe illness and co-infection with two kinds of parasites normally found in land animals. One, Sarcocystis neurona, is a newcomer to the northwest coastal region of North America and is not known to infect people, while the other, Toxoplasma gondii, has been established there for some time and caused a large outbreak of disease in people in 1995. Scientists from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part ...

Last week, starting on May 15, it was Dog Bite Prevention week. Old news? Not if you've ever been the victim of a dog bite attack or other type of animal attack, or you've been threatened by an aggressive dog, you know that dog bite prevention is something that should be done year-round. We all love our dogs. But, simply put, some dog owners are negligent in the way they keep their pets. Depending on the breed of dog, and the animal's particular disposition - has the dog been known to display aggressive tendencies? - allowing dogs to roam free opens up dog owners to ...

A study of 1,455 U.S. men diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer has found a link between brisk walking and lowered risk of prostate cancer progression, according to scientists at the University of California, San Francisco and the Harvard School of Public Health. The scientists found that men who walked briskly -- at least three miles per hour -- for at least three hours per week after diagnosis were nearly 60 percent less likely to develop biochemical markers of cancer recurrence or need a second round of treatment for prostate cancer. "The important point was ...

Bupa has joined forces with charity The Reader Organisation to encourage its care home residents to 'get into reading' with special reading aloud groups. The 'Get into Reading' groups will be piloted in eight Bupa care homes for six months from April 2011. Get into Reading aims to bring the benefits of reading aloud and of social interaction to people in health and care environments, such as residential homes or homes offering nursing care. Each group will enjoy shared reading led by a project worker from The Reader Organisation for an hour each week. Members will ...

A new study by Baylor University environmental health researchers found that zebra fish exposed to several different technical mixtures of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) – a common fire retardant – during early development can cause developmental malformations, changes in behavior and death. The study will appear in the June issue of the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry and is the first to test multiple PBDE mixtures for changes in behavior, physical malformations and mortality on zebra fish. PBDEs are found in many common household products from ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Many kinds of algae and cyanobacteria, common water-dwelling microorganisms, are capable of using energy from sunlight to split water molecules and release hydrogen, which holds promise as a clean and carbon-free fuel for the future. One reason this approach hasn't yet been harnessed for fuel production is that under ordinary circumstances, hydrogen production takes a back seat to the production of compounds that the organisms use to support their own growth. But Shuguang Zhang, associate director of MIT's Center for Biomedical Engineering, and postdocs ...

TORONTO, Ont., May 24, 2011—For every year a person is homeless, the odds of them having a family doctor drop by 9 per cent, according to a report by St. Michael's Hospital and Street Health. One of the key barriers to having a family doctor is the lack of a health card, often because it has been lost or stolen, the report found. The report, published today in the journal Open Medicine, www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/368/407, is an analysis of data collected for The Street Health Report 2007, a survey of the health status and needs of homeless people in downtown Toronto. ...

npower has announced that Royals' fan Mark Horseman will be the face of Reading FC when they take on Swansea City. Mark, 63, from Kennington, Oxford, will feature on a giant 24 x16 metre poster on the side of Wembley Stadium on Monday, May 30 - seen by thousands of people on their way into the ground for the npower Championship play offs Final. Mark won the competition - run by Football League title sponsors npower - after explaining what the Reading shirt means to him. There were more than three thousand entries from football fans across the country. He explained ...

A team of researchers from Galicia in Spain have used forensic mitochondrial DNA species identification techniques to distinguish between sardines and horse mackerel. This method makes it possible to genetically differentiate between the fish, even if they are canned or processed, which makes it easier to monitor the degree to which fisheries resources are being exploited. DNA from the mitochondria – cell organelles – is ideal for distinguishing between species. One of its components in particular, cytochrome b, is a genetic marker that scientists use to establish relationships ...

WASHINGTON, May 24, 2011 — The latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS) award-winning podcast series, "Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions," focuses on new blood test that can quickly tell whether patients are infected with an antibiotic-resistant bacterium that's become a global threat, significantly improving treatment. This "superbug" is called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or simply MRSA. The podcast explains how MRSA started off as a threat mainly in hospitals and nursing homes among patients with open wounds, urinary catheters and ...

Berkeley, CA—In the next 40 years, California's population is expected to surge from 37 million to 55 million and the demand for energy is expected to double. Given those daunting numbers, can California really reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, as required by an executive order? Scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who co-wrote a new report on California's energy future are optimistic that the target can be achieved, though not without bold policy and behavioral changes as well as some scientific innovation. The ...

Global digital marketing and technology agency LBi and its media arm bigmouthmedia today released a joint white paper on digital innovation in the retail sector.  The document analyses how the touchable web and the trends towards a multi-device, multi-channel future are fast becoming an opportunity for retail brands to engage and reward consumers with deep and positive retail and marketing experiences.  At the same time, it looks into the blurring edges of the online and offline environments and the opportunities presented by consumers expecting to interact with brands ...

Tiny fossil teeth discovered in Inner Mongolia are a new species of birch mouse, indicating that ancestors of the small rodent are much older than previously reported, according to paleontologist Yuri Kimura at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Fossils of the new species were discovered in sediments that are 17 million years old, said Kimura, who identified the new species and named it Sicista primus to include the Latin word for "first." Previously the oldest prehistoric ancestor of the modern-day birch mouse was one that inhabited Inner Mongolia 8 million years ...

The Emirates Academy of Hospitality Management, one of the world's leading hospitality management schools and part of Jumeirah Group, recently signed a cooperation agreement with the Beijing Hospitality Institute. The agreement establishes an academic exchange programme between The Emirates Academy of Hospitality Management and Beijing Hospitality Institute - a specialist university certified by the Ecole hoteliere de Lausanne (EHL). The agreement provides study abroad programmes for students, faculty exchanges, academic cooperation and programmes for the development ...

Contemplating mortality can be terrifying. But not everyone responds to that terror in the same way. Now, a new study which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds cultural differences in how people respond to mortality. European-Americans get worried and try to protect their sense of self, while Asian-Americans are more likely to reach out to others. Much of the research on what psychologists call "mortality salience" – thinking about death – has been done on people of European descent, ...

In a world where everything from placement in a Google search result to World Cup eligibility depends on ranking and numerical ratings of some kind, it is becoming increasingly important to analyze the algorithms and techniques that underlie such ranking methods in order to ensure fairness, eliminate bias, and tailor them to specific applications. In a paper published this month in the SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing, authors Timothy Chartier, Erich Kreutzer, Amy Langville, and Kathryn Pedings mathematically analyze three commonly-used ranking methods. "We studied ...

Confused.com has announced that the well-loved 70's disco anthem YMCA is the soundtrack to the latest advert "Con-Fused-Dot-Com" featuring animated logo Cara. The new thirty second advert, focusing on car insurance, launched on Sunday 22nd May, with its peak spot taking place during the new ITV1 drama Vera. The new advert is once again voiced by Louise Dearman who plays the lead in the popular West End hit musical, Wicked. Animated and produced by Hornet, with musical arrangement from Speckulation entertainment, the advert will feature living logo Cara singing ...

More than just a tool for predicting health, modern genetics is upending long-held assumptions about who we are. A new study by Harvard researchers casts new light on the intermingling and migration of European, Middle Eastern and African and populations since ancient times. In a paper titled "The History of African Gene Flow into Southern Europeans, Levantines and Jews," published in PLoS Genetics, HMS Associate Professor of Genetics David Reich and his colleagues investigated the proportion of sub-Saharan African ancestry present in various populations in West Eurasia, ...

MANHASSET, NY --– After decades of studying the pathological process that wipes out large volumes of memory, scientists at The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research discovered a molecule called c-Abl that has a known role in leukemia also has a hand in Alzheimer's disease. The finding, reported in the June 14th issue of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, offers a new target for drug development that could stave off the pathological disease process. Peter Davies, PhD, head of the Feinstein Institute's Litwin-Zucker Center for Research in Alzheimer's Disease, became ...

Bupa has held Communi-tea Week events in its care homes to help tackle loneliness in older people. Residents of Bupa care homes throughout the UK have brewed up some community spirit by inviting older people to join them for a friendly cup of tea. Altogether, over 300 care homes, including residential care and nursing care homes, hosted special afternoon tea parties to mark Communi-tea Week, a nationwide campaign which aimed to use tea-related social activities to help tackle the problems of isolation and loneliness in older people. Worrying statistics demonstrate ...

NASHVILLE, Tenn.—Understanding the actions of other people can be difficult for those with schizophrenia. Vanderbilt University researchers have discovered that impairments in a brain area involved in perception of social stimuli may be partly responsible for this difficulty. "Misunderstanding social situations and interactions are core deficits in schizophrenia," said Sohee Park, Gertrude Conaway Professor of Psychology and one of the co-authors on this study. "Our findings may help explain the origins of some of the delusions involving perception and thoughts experienced ...