Traditionally doctors nurses and other healthcare providers have been the ones to deliver smoking cessation messages.
A new study in the American Journal of Health Behavior finds that simple training in effective smoking cessation strategies can motivate anyone--even those without a medical background--to encourage their friends family
People are concerned about their own health and their loved ones'health says lead study author Myra Muramoto M d. of the University of Arizona Department of Family and Community Medicine.
They might want to help a loved one quit tobacco but a lot of times they don't know what to do.
If someone has struggled not with tobacco addiction themselves they may not understand why someone can't just quit.
Norman Edelman M d. senior medical advisor for the American Lung Association remarked that the study shows quite clearly that you can train people without medical knowledge to deliver informative messages.
The above story is provided based on materials by Health Behavior News Service part of the Center for Advancing Health.
The Asian citrus psyllid (ACP) can spread the lethal and incurable citrus disease known as huanglongbing (HLB)
which spreads a bacterium that causes zebra chip disease. Such low attack rates are unlikely to cause population declines of this pest.
The researchers who report their findings in the online version of the journal Environmental Toxicology
and labeling of foods rich in whole grains was born of the HEALTHGRAIN EU project the largest project ever focusing on cereals and health;
The need for developing a more comprehensive detailed whole grain definition was identified during the course of the HEALTHGRAIN EU project an initiative intended to increase the use of whole grains and their health protecting constituents in food products for improved nutrition and health benefits.
The expansive project has involved everything from research to better understand specific health benefits of whole grains to exploration of new ways to get products high in their healthy compounds onto the market.
In fact by preying on the individual insects that survive the Bt toxin bats may provide the additional service of slowing the evolution of resistance to Bt and other insecticides.
when they were located in intensively farmed regions'said Dr Lindsay Turnbull of Oxford university's Department of Plant sciences senior author of the study.'
and organic fertilisers with minimal chemical pesticides'said Dr Turnbull.''There are also regional differences in farming practices
#Pesticides increase risk for Parkinsons disease: Certain people may be more susceptibleprevious studies have shown the certain pesticides can increase the risk for developing Parkinson's disease.
Now UCLA researchers have now found that the strength of that risk depends on an individual's genetic makeup
which in the most pesticide-exposed populations could increase the chances of developing the debilitating disease by two-to sixfold.
In a previous study published January 2013 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the UCLA research team discovered a link between Parkinson's
which converts aldehydes highly toxic to dopamine cells into less toxic agents and therefore contributed to the development of Parkinson's.
In this study UCLA researchers tested a number of other pesticides and found 11 that also inhibit ALDH
and increase the risk of Parkinson's and at much lower levels than those at which they are currently being used said study lead author Jeff Bronstein a professor of neurology
and director of movement disorders at UCLA. Bronstein said the team also found that people with a common genetic variant of the ALDH2 gene are particularly sensitive to the effects of ALDH-inhibiting pesticides
and were two to six times more likely to develop Parkinson's than those without the variant when exposed to these pesticides.
The results of the epidemiological study appear Feb 5 2014 in the online issue of Neurology the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
The study compared 360 patients with Parkinson's in three agriculture heavy Central California counties to 816 people from the same area who did not have Parkinson's.
Exposure to pesticides starts a cascade of cellular events preventing ALDH from keeping a lid on DOPAL a toxin that naturally occurs in the brain.
When ALDH does not detoxify DOPAL sufficiently it accumulates damages neurons and increases an individual's risk of developing Parkinson's.
which these environmental toxins contribute to Parkinson's pathogenesis especially in genetically vulnerable individuals said study author Beate Ritz a professor of epidemiology at the Fielding School of Public health at UCLA. This suggests several potential interventions to reduce Parkinson's occurrence
Then the researchers found that those participants in the epidemiologic study with a genetic variant in the ALDH gene were increased at risk of Parkinson's when exposed to these pesticides.
however did not increase risk of the disease Bronstein said. This report provides evidence for the relevance of ALDH inhibition in Parkinson's disease pathogenesis identifies pesticides that should be avoided to reduce the risk of developing Parkinson's disease
and suggests that therapies modulating ALDH enzyme activity or otherwise eliminating toxic aldehydes should be developed
and tested to potentially reduce Parkinson's disease occurrence or slow its progression particularly for patients exposed to pesticides the study states.
The study was funded in part by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (P01es016732 R01es010544 5r21es16446-2 and U54es012078) the National Institute of Neurological disorders and Stroke (NS038367) the Veterans Administration Healthcare
System the Michael j fox Foundation the Levine Foundation the Parkinson Alliance the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship and the Ruth L. Kirschstein Institutional National Research Service
Award in Molecular Toxicology (T32es015457. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of California Los angeles (UCLA) Health Sciences.
The original article was written by Kim Irwin. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference e
#Local foods offer tangible economic benefits in some regionsdespite their typically small size and sparse distribution farms that sell their products locally may boost economic growth in their communities in some regions of the U s. according to a team of economists.
There has been a lot of hope but little evidence that local food systems can be an engine of economic growth in communities said Stephan Goetz professor of agricultural and regional economics in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences and director
Injection of new money--money from outside of the community--is what many economic development practitioners think of as the fuel for economic growth.
But to me these findings provide quite robust evidence that even direct sales do have an effect on growth in the Northeast U s. Story Source:
According to lead author Dr. Jantz Maintaining connectivity of forest ecosystems provides ecological and societal benefits ensuring long-term species survival
Co-author Dr. Goetz sees corridors as avenues for migration of flora and fauna needed for their survival under the climate change we're already committed to.
For Dr. Jantz the VCS corridor approach informs global frameworks for land management based climate change mitigation by showing
For Dr. Goetz Conserving tropical forests ultimately requires prioritizing the services they provide to people in a local setting.
Dr. Laporte adds Because it is unlikely all remaining tropical forests can be protected the corridors defined by this study provide a way to prioritize lands in the context of the multiple benefits of tropical forest conservation.
According to Dr. Thomas E. Lovejoy a Senior Fellow at the United nations Foundation This represents a significant step towards the kind of integrated planning and management essential for sustainable development.
and redefines financial stress according to returns over feed costs instead of just the price of milk.
#Painting robot lends surgeons a hand in the operating roomwould you let an artist perform lifesaving surgery on you?
and shapes a surgeon makes with a scalpel using a paintbrush and canvas. His invention a creative blend of art and science could one day lend doctors a hand in practicing complex robot-assisted surgeries without having to step foot in an operating room.
Rethinking roboticslee a sophomore who plans to major in chemistry spent his high school years building everything from a robot that can balance on a beam to a robotic arm that can throw a ball.
and that prompted the idea of robotic surgery. Lee said painting and surgery have more in common than initially meets the eye.
A painter has to be nimble and precise with his brushstrokes much like a surgeon must be nimble and precise with a scalpel.
When you are dissecting a part of the human body you have to be one hundred percent perfect he said.
With the support of a grant from the Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities (URECA) Center Lee teamed up with Craig Hamilton an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Wake Forest Baptist Medical center
and shapes a surgeon makes with a scalpel all on its own he said. You can think of a painting canvas as a body and the brush as a surgeon's knife.
Practicing in a surgeon's studiocurrently surgical robots are controlled by a human operator and do not perform procedures autonomously.
While Lee's robot may never be put to work in an operating room it and other robots like it could one day help researchers to design fully autonomous robotic surgeons.
In addition to teaching the robot to paint autonomously Lee also explored the idea of using his robot as a training tool for surgeons who need practice operating a Da vinci surgical arm.
At the Wake Forest Medical center doctors use replica bodies to help train surgeons to use the Da vinci system Lee said.
These replicas are compared pretty expensive to my robotic arm which cost around $1500. This April Lee will represent Wake Forest at the ACC Meeting of the Minds an event where outstanding undergraduate researchers from each ACC university gather at one member university to present their research either verbally or as a poster.
Working with Dr. Hamilton on my robot has been a great opportunity and there are definitely still a lot of things we can still learn from it Lee said.
and many other crops said Dr. Anthony Shelton a professor of entomology at Cornell University
but they did not suffer any harm even over multiple generations. In a similar article appearing in the February 2014 issue of the Journal of Economic Entomology called Tri-Trophic Studies Using Cry1ac-Resistant Plutella xylostella Demonstrate No Adverse Effects of Cry1ac on the Entomopathogenic
which a nematode predator has been tested in such detail against a Bt protein Dr. Shelton said.
The results of our study indicate that arthropod diversity even in high-input farming systems is as high as in subsistence farming systems said Dr. Johnnie Van den berg a professor at North-West University
Our study was conducted to characterize changes in plant relations of citrus plants with soil moisture carefully maintained at high levels to minimize drought stress.
During the experiments trees were watered twice daily--three times on the days data were collected--to minimize drought stress.
which can promote health and physically active lifestyle. They added that the data can also be useful information when designing garden-based therapeutic interventions for children with low levels of physical ability.
The complete study and abstract are available on the ASHS Horttechnology electronic journal web site: http://horttech. ashspublications. org/content/23/5/589. abstractstory Source:
Nitrogen the most important and widely used agricultural nutrient is also a major environmental contaminant. In many regions increased levels of nitrate found in groundwater have been attributed to the high rates of nitrogen fertilizer applied to surrounding crops.
The impact of large-scale tropical cyclones affects the health of managed and unmanaged forests urban landscapes and perennial horticulture plantings for many years after the actual storm.
'because their health and appearance is defined inextricably by the most recent typhoons. As recently as 2002 Cycas micronesica was the most abundant tree species in Guam.
The team compared the impact of two tropical cyclones--Typhoon Chaba in 2004 and Typhoon Paka in 1997--on the resilience and health of Cycas micronesica.
and plant health explained Borisova. Borisova and Useche recommend development of a comprehensive evaluation approach for water use programs that includes evaluation of actual water use reductions
Most conservation practitioners interviewed in these studies had a negative or at best ambivalent view about the desirability of allowing or encouraging foraging particularly in parks or natural areas.
and The Sainsbury Laboratory Norwich looked in unprecedented detail at how Phytophthora infestans a pathogen that continues to blight potatoes
The study published today in the journal Science is the first to show how pathogens switch from targeting one species to another through changes at the molecular level.
and sister species Phytophthora mirabilis a pathogen that split from P. infestans around 1300 years ago to target the Mirabilis jalapa plant commonly known as the four o'clock flower.
They found that each pathogen species secretes specialised substances to shut down the defences of their target hosts'Plants have called these enzymes proteases that play a key role in their defence systems'said Dr Renier van der Hoorn co-author of the study from Oxford university
'When a plant becomes infected proteases help plants to attack the invading pathogens and trigger immune responses.
'For the first time we have found a direct molecular mechanism underpinning the change in host specialisation'said Dr van der Hoorn.'
'We looked at specialisation in the blight pathogens'secret weapon a key family of effectors called'EPIC'that can pass through plants'defences undetected to disable the proteases.
and destroy the pathogen. Potato and tomato plants with such proteases would be resistant to the blight pathogens
and combined with other resistant traits could provide another'wall'of defence against the pathogens.'
'Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Oxford. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
#Gastric bypass improves insulin secretion in pigsthe majority of gastric bypass patients mysteriously recover from their type 2 diabetes within days before any weight loss has taken place.
A study at Lund University Diabetes Centre in Sweden has shown now that the insulin-producing beta cells increase in number and performance after the surgery.
but there have not previously been any models to prove it says Dr Nils Wierup who led the research.
The small study involved gastric bypass surgery on just four pigs but is the only study of its kind and therefore unique.
Type 2 diabetes develops when the body's insulin-producing beta cells stop working or when the body is not able to use the insulin that the cells produce.
and undergo a gastric bypass operation recover from their diabetes within days of the procedure.
Until now it has been a mystery why patients'blood sugar levels normalise. The group at Lund University Diabetes Centre found that the pigs'beta cells improve their insulin secretion.
The researchers also studied tissue from the pigs'pancreas the organ where the beta cells are located something that is almost impossible to do in humans.
since it also helps the further refinements of surgical methods says Jan Hedenbro surgeon at Aleris Obesitas who has collaborated with Lund University Diabetes Centre on the project.
The researchers hope that the findings could lead to new methods of treatment for type 2 diabetes in the future.
and diabetes concludes Nils Wierup. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Lund University.
Rice researchers led by chemist Stephan Link and graduate student Anneli Hoggard are endeavoring to understand the physics;
developmenta joint study published in Cell by the teams headed by Miquel Coll at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona)
The biomedical applications of these hormones as anti-tumor agents and to facilitate somatic cell reprogramming (the cells that form tissues) to stem cells are also being investigated.
and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble Dr. Miquel Coll a structural biologist and his team analyzed the DNA binding mode used by various ARFS.
The above story is provided based on materials by Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona. Note:
and play a critical role in storing atmospheric carbon says Dr. William Hoffmann associate professor of plant
drug trafficking. In an article in the journal Science seven researchers who have done work in Central america point to growing evidence that drug trafficking threatens forests in remote areas of Honduras Guatemala Nicaragua and nearby countries.
Traffickers are slashing down forests often within protected areas to make way for clandestine landing strips and roads to move drugs
and converting forests into agribusinesses to launder their drug profits the researchers say. Much of this appears to be a response to U s.-led anti-trafficking efforts especially in Mexico said Kendra Mcsweeney lead author of the Science article and an associate professor of geography at The Ohio State university.
In response to the crackdown in Mexico drug traffickers began moving south into Central america around 2007 to find new routes through remote areas to move their drugs from South america
When drug traffickers moved in they brought ecological devastation with them. For example the researchers found that the amount of new deforestation per year more than quadrupled in Honduras between 2007 and 2011--the same period when cocaine movements in the country also spiked.
Mcsweeney is a geographer who has done research in Honduras for more than 20 years studying how indigenous people interact with their environment.
The drug trade is not something she would normally investigate but it has been impossible to ignore in recent years she said.
los narcos (drug traffickers. There were other indications of drug trafficking taking place in the area. I would get approached by people who wanted to change $20 bills in places where cash is very scarce
and dollars are not the normal currency. When that starts happening you know narcos are said there she.
The infusion of drug cash into these areas helps embolden resident ranchers land speculators and timber traffickers to expand their activities primarily at the expense of the indigenous people who are often key forest defenders.
In addition the drug traffickers themselves convert forest to agriculture as a way to launder their money.
and is therefore illegal drug traffickers often use their profits to influence government leaders to look the other way.
Mcsweeney said more research is needed to examine the links between drug trafficking and conservation issues.
But there is already enough evidence to show that U s. drug policy has a much wider effect than is realized often.
Drug policies are also conservation policies whether we realize it or not Mcsweeney said. U s.-led militarized interdiction for example has succeeded mainly in moving traffickers around driving them to operate in evermore remote biodiverse ecosystems.
Reforming drug policies could alleviate some of the pressures on Central america's disappearing forests. The paper was authored co by Erik Neilsen and Ophelia Wang of Northern Arizona University;
Helps babies struggling to breathethe first clinical study of a low-cost neonatal breathing system created by Rice university bioengineering students demonstrated that the device increased the survival rate of newborns with severe respiratory illness from 44
The results which were published online this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE came from a 10-month study of 87 patients at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH) in Blantyre Malawi.
The researchers found that premature infants with complications like sepsis very low birth weight and respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) benefited most from the new technology.
Survival rates more than doubled for babies with RDS and more than tripled for babies in the other two categories after treatment with bubble CPAP.
Premature birth is now the second leading cause of death among children worldwide and most premature babies are born in low-resource settings where many of the basic technologies
and approaches that lead to improved outcomes are said unavailable Dr. Elizabeth Molyneux a pediatrician at QECH who co-authored the report with colleagues from Rice QECH Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Malawi.
The results from the bubble CPAP clinical study are dramatic and thanks to the partnership of QECH Rice
and the Malawi Ministry of Health we are already implementing bubble CPAP nationwide. CPAP helps babies breathe more easily by keeping their lungs inflated
but with a price around $6000 conventional neonatal CPAP machines are too expensive for hospitals in the developing world.
°Institute for Global Health Technologies'award-winning hands-on engineering education program Beyond Traditional Borders (BTB.
QECH the main referral hospital in southern Malawi admits about 3000 babies per year to its neonatal ward.
The 2012 clinical study involved newborns suffering from respiratory distress. Patients were treated with bubble CPAP
whenever a machine and trained staff were available. The study included data from 62 infants who were treated with bubble CPAP
respiratory distress syndrome 64 percent with bubble CPAP compared with 23 percent without; very low birth weight 65 percent with bubble CPAP compared with 15 percent without;
and sepsis 61 percent with bubble CPAP and zero without. The improvement that we saw for premature babies with respiratory distress syndrome mirrored the improvement that was seen in the United states
when CPAP was introduced first here said Rice's Rebecca Richards-Kortum the Stanley C. Moore Professor and chair of the Department of Bioengineering and director of both BTB and Rice 360â°.
Based on the dramatic results from the study QECH Rice 360â°and the Malawi Ministry of Health have partnered to provide bubble CPAP at all 27 of the country's government hospitals.
To date 22 of the machines have been installed at nine hospitals and 354 clinicians have been trained to use them.
Richards-Kortum and Maria Oden director of Rice's Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK) founded the hands-on BTB engineering education program in 2006.
and to establish an innovation hub at the hospital where student-developed technologies can be showcased proven
It's difficult to overstate the importance of the clinical results for bubble CPAP said Oden a co-author of the new study.
Additional pilot programs for bubble CPAP are set to begin this year at teaching hospitals in Tanzania Zambia
and South africa thanks to a $400000 prize announced Nov 14 as part of the inaugural Healthcare Innovation Award program sponsored by pharmaceutical giant Glaxosmithkline and London-based nonprofit Save the Children.
to address the major health challenges facing women and children around the world. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Rice university.
but many plants are toxic and potentially deadly. So how do babies learn what's good to eat and
which can signal something is poisonous. Human food learning is complex and we're only just starting to scratch the surface of these important questions she says.
and Dalesbred each showed a lower than average risk of infection to Maidi Visna a virus causing a slow-acting disease affecting millions of sheep worldwide with massive welfare and economic impacts.
valos who joined forces with Dr. Elizabeth Dumont and a mechanical engineer Dr. Ian Grosse (both of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst) in a recently published paper in Evolution that lays out the team's findings relating mechanical advantage
Dr. Beth Clare Queen Mary University. The key finding is that in a highly diverse group--New world Leaf-nosed bats--selection for mechanical advantage has shaped three distinct optimal skull shapes that correspond to feeding niches Dr. Dá
valos explains. The key development is an engineering model of a very complex structure--the skull--that can morph into both known observed skulls as well as into forms that do not exist
Dr. Dávalos and her Stony Brook University students generated the evolutionary hypotheses evolutionary trees and tests of selection reported in the study;
This means that even though these bats have been diverging for millions of years we can still find the signatures of natural selection in their current diversity says Dr. Dá
My goal as a scientist is to uncover the evolutionary forces that have shaped biodiversity says Dr. Dá
While this won't provide a solution to bee colony collapse disorder it could provide an option for improving the shrinking population of bees'pollen-collecting capacity.
Greening a disease first found in Florida in 2005 has led to $4 billion in lost revenue and industry-related jobs since 2006 for the $9 billion-a-year citrus industry.
#Bacterial toxin potential trigger for multiple sclerosisresearchers from Weill Cornell Medical College have added to the growing body of evidence that multiple sclerosis may be triggered by a toxin produced by common foodborne bacteria.
The presented their research at the 2014 ASM Biodefense and Emerging Diseases Research Meeting. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory disease of the central nervous system characterized by blood brain (BBB) permeability and demyelination a process in
which the insulating myelin sheaths of neurons are damaged. The disease is thought to be triggered in a genetically susceptible individual by a combination of one or more environmental factors.
The environmental trigger of MS however is still unknown. According to the National Multiple sclerosis Society the condition affects approximately 400000 Americans
and is with the exception of trauma the most frequent cause of neurological disability beginning in early to middle adulthood.
We provide evidence that supports epsilon toxin's ability to cause BBB permeability and show that epsilon toxin kills the brain's myelin producing cells oligodendrocytes;
the same cells that die in MS lesions says Jennifer Linden of Weill Cornell Medical College who presented the research.
We also show that epsilon toxin targets other cells types associated with MS inflammation such as the retinal vascular and meningeal cells.
Epsilon toxin may be responsible for triggering MS. Epsilon toxin is produced by certain strains of Clostridium perfringens a spore-forming bacterium that is one of the most common causes of foodborne illness in the United states. The U s. Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention estimates that non-epsilon toxin producing C. perfringens strains cause nearly a million cases of foodborne illness each year.
Previous studies have suggested that C. perfringens and in particular epsilon toxin may play a role in triggering MS. Late last year Linden
and her colleagues discovered C. perfringens type B (a strain that is not known to infect humans
and produces the epsilon toxin) in a 21-year-old woman who was experiencing a flare-up of her MS. To further test their hypothesis Linden
and her colleagues studied the behavior of the toxin in mice specifically which cells it targeted.
They discovered that the toxin did target the brain cells associated with MS pathology. But that was not all they found.
Originally we only thought that epsilon toxin would target the brain endothelium cells and oligodendrocytes;
we just happened to notice that it also bound to and killed meningeal cells. This was exciting
because it provides a possible explanation for meningeal inflammation and subpial cortical lesions exclusively observed in MS patients
but not fully understood says Linden. They also tested samples of local foods for the presence of C. perfringens and the toxin gene.
Of the 37 food samples 13.5%were positive for bacteria and 2. 7%were positive for the epsilon toxin gene.
Linden says these findings are important because if it can be confirmed that epsilon toxin is indeed a trigger of MS development of a neutralizing antibody
or vaccine directed against epsilon toxin might stop the progression of the disease or prevent it from even developing.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by American Society for Microbiology. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length h
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