The study is published online June 13 in the American Journal of Public health. In most states for many years it has been illegal to sell cigarettes to people under 18
but few provisions are in place to prevent those sales said the study's first author Richard A. Grucza Phd associate professor of psychiatry.
Grucza's team evaluated data from an ongoing National Cancer Institute survey that monitors smoking behavior in all 50 states.
and Drug Administration (FDA) since 2009 many of the more restrictive policies are in effect nationally so Grucza's team believes future smoking rates among adults may decline at least partly as a result of those policies.
Funding for this research comes from the National Institute on Drug abuse and the National Cancer Institute of the National institutes of health (NIH.
It also was supported by grants from the American Cancer Society and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
NIH grant numbers: R21 DA0266 R01 DA031288 R01 DA0269112 T32 DA07313 K01 DA025733 K02 DA021237 and P01 CA89392.
and tin oxide showed an initial capacity better than the theoretical capacity of tin oxide alone according to Rice chemist James Tour.
The above story is provided based on materials by BMJ-British Medical Journal. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
but they could also help obese people better control inflammation-related diseases such as diabetes according to Penn State researchers.
but I was surprised at the dramatic reduction of inflammation and fatty liver disease. The researchers reported that several indicators of inflammation
and diabetes in the mice that were fed the cocoa supplement were much lower than the mice that were fed the high-fat diet without the cocoa powder
High levels of insulin can signal that a patient has diabetes. The cocoa powder supplement also reduced the levels of liver triglycerides in mice by a little more than 32 percent according to Lambert who worked with Yeyi Gu graduate student in food science and Shan Yu a graduate student in physiology.
Elevated triglyceride levels are a sign of fatty liver disease and are related to inflammation and diabetes.
The mice also saw a slight but significant drop in the rate of body weight gain according to the researchers who reported their findings in the online version of the European Journal of Nutrition.
While researchers have linked obesity-related chronic inflammation to several diseases including type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease the reason for the inflammation response is known not completely.
Lambert said two theories on inflammation and obesity that have emerged may help explain cocoa's role in mitigating inflammation.
Lambert said that another theory is that excess fat in the diet interferes with the body's ability to keep a bacterial component called endotoxin from entering the bloodstream through gaps between cells in the digestive system--gut barrier function
--and alerting an immune response. The cocoa in this case may help improve gut barrier function. Cocoa although commonly consumed in chocolate actually has low-calorie content low-fat content and high-fiber content.
which researchers have been studying for some of their health benefits. Lambert said he expects future research will be conducted to better identify why the cocoa powder is effective in treating inflammation as well as determine
The National institutes of health supported this work. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Penn State.
The C-23 won't win any beauty contests--its pilots refer to it as a UPS truck with a bad nose job.
and helps defends a plant against pathogens among a variety of other functions. Teasing out the specific genes that perform each of these discrete functions from the many genes found to be activated by ethylene might allow scientists to produce plant strains that slow down growth
or make plants more resistant to disease says the senior investigator Joseph R. Ecker head of Salk's Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology laboratory.
or pathogens says Katherine Chang the first author of the paper and researcher in Ecker's lab. In this way mapping interconnections between the hormone pathways may have implications in agriculture.
The study was funded by grants from the Department of energy (DE-FG03-00er15113 DE-FG02-04er15517) National Science Foundation (MCB-0924871) Canadian Institutes of Health Research (MOP-111007
) National Science Foundation Plant Systems Biology IGERT (DGE-0504645) The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (Grant GBMF3034) Gates Millennium Scholarship National institutes of health (1ro1
GM085022) National institutes of health NRSA (F32-HG004830) The Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the National Science Foundation (MCB-1024999.
and other environmental contaminantsa study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public health has for the first time found that a mother's higher exposure to some common environmental contaminants was associated with more frequent and vigorous fetal motor activity.
The study is available online in advance of publication in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology.
Most studies of environmental contaminants and child development wait until children are much older to evaluate effects of things the mother may have been exposed to during pregnancy;
here we have observed effects in utero said Janet A. Dipietro Phd lead author of the study and Associate Dean for Research at the Bloomberg School of Public health.
This is yet more evidence for the need to protect the vulnerable developing brain from effects of environmental contaminants both before
The research was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shiver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) 2r01 HD27592 and the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Center
The above story is provided based on materials by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public health. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
and there are reports of increasing numbers of cases of skin inflammation in people bitten by deer keds Knut Madslien has monitored the spread pattern of deer keds in Fennoscandia produced a description of pathological hair loss
which can be favourable for the parasite and possible pathogens in the deer ked and its host.
and that deer keds act as vectors for Bartonella bacteria infections. However it is not yet clear to what degree these bacteria can cause disease.
Measuring the stress hormone cortisol in the moose's coat was used as a method for appraising the long-term effect of the deer ked on the health
and welfare of moose but Madslien found that in general there was little connection between the number of deer keds the weight of moose at the time of slaughter and the level of cortisol in the hair.
(NINA) Sweden's National Veterinary Institute Uppsala University Hospital Sweden and the University of Oulu Finland were key collaborators.
Refuges consist of standard non-Bt plants that pests can eat without ingesting Bt toxins. Computer models showed that refuges should be especially good for delaying resistance
We've also started exchanging ideas and information with scientists facing related challenges such as herbicide resistance in weeds and resistance to drugs in bacteria HIV and cancer.
A small percentage of whitebark pine trees have outlived the ongoing destruction by pests and disease. These trees are the next area of focus for Crone's team.
and Zen masters have known for years that meditation can reduce anxiety but not how. Scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical center however have succeeded in identifying the brain functions involved.
Although we've known that meditation can reduce anxiety we hadn't identified the specific brain mechanisms involved in relieving anxiety in healthy individuals said Fadel Zeidan Ph d. postdoctoral research fellow in neurobiology
and anatomy at Wake Forest Baptist and lead author of the study. In this study we were able to see which areas of the brain were activated and
which were deactivated during meditation-related anxiety relief. The study is published in the current edition of the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
For the study 15 healthy volunteers with normal levels of everyday anxiety were recruited for the study.
These individuals had no previous meditation experience or anxiety disorders. All subjects participated in four 20-minute classes to learn a technique known as mindfulness meditation.
In this form of meditation people are taught to focus on breath and body sensations and to non-judgmentally evaluate distracting thoughts and emotions.
Both before and after meditation training the study participants'brain activity was examined using a special type of imaging--arterial spin labeling magnetic resonance imaging--that is very effective at imaging brain processes such as meditation.
In addition anxiety reports were measured before and after brain scanning. The majority of study participants reported decreases in anxiety.
Researchers found that meditation reduced anxiety ratings by as much as 39 percent. This showed that just a few minutes of mindfulness meditation can help reduce normal everyday anxiety Zeidan said.
The study revealed that meditation-related anxiety relief is associated with activation of the anterior cingulate cortex and ventromedial prefrontal cortex areas of the brain involved with executive-level function.
During meditation there was more activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex the area of the brain that controls worrying.
In addition when activity increased in the anterior cingulate cortex--the area that governs thinking and emotion--anxiety decreased.
Mindfulness is premised on sustaining attention in the present moment and controlling the way we react to daily thoughts
and feelings Zeidan said Interestingly the present findings reveal that the brain regions associated with meditation-related anxiety relief are remarkably consistent with the principles of being mindful.
Research at other institutions has shown that meditation can significantly reduce anxiety in patients with generalized anxiety and depression disorders.
The results of this neuroimaging experiment complement that body of knowledge by showing the brain mechanisms associated with meditation-related anxiety relief in healthy people he said.
Support for the study was provided by the Mind and Life Institute's Francisco J. Varela Grant the National institutes of health grant NS3926 and the Biomolecular Imaging Center at Wake Forest Baptist.
The above story is provided based on materials by Wake Forest Baptist Medical center. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Dr. Patrick Mcgovern Director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and author of Ancient Wine:
and written in collaboration with colleagues from France and the United states. For Dr. Mcgovern much of
and Pinot noir were the best cultivars to grow in Burgundy Dr. Mcgovern noted. What we haven't had is clear chemical evidence combined with botanical and archaeological data showing how wine was introduced into France
Alcoholic beverages in which resinous and herbal compounds are more easily put into solution were the principle medications of antiquity.
The Broader Picturefor nearly two decades Dr. Mcgovern has been following the story of the origin
Dr. Mcgovern observes a common pattern for the spreading of the new wine culture: First entice the rulers who could afford to import
ZSL's Dr. Trent Garner a co-author on the paper says: Existing practices in managing oil palm are not accommodating the highly threatened forest frog species in Malaysia
In addition to mechanical defenses such as thorns and spines plants also produce compounds that keep insects and other herbivores at bay by acting as repellents or toxins.
The combination of such neurological experiments and ecological field studies are very promising and may provide further insights into odor-guided behavior of insects in nature and agriculture.
The technique developed by Dr. Annemie Van der Linden and her laboratory at the University of Antwerp in Belgium will be one of the first published in Jove Behavior a new section of the video journal that focuses on observational and experimental techniques that seek to understand human and animal
behavior through physiological neurological and genetic means. Species of animals that are more vocal in their expression like macaques parrots
By utilizing a high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging apparatus (fmri) Dr. Van der Linden and her colleagues can image the brains of live birds in a noninvasive environment.
and to a lesser extent on mice Dr. Van der Linden explains. Thus far songbird brains have been studied using electrophysiological and histological techniques.
and reproduce behavioral experiments such as bird fmri techniques as described in Dr. Van der Linden's article which are both novel and technically complex.
Proud to be included in this significant new section Dr. Van der Linden says MRI imaging techniques should in the near future lead to major conceptual advances in the study of how the brain changes behavior
and how behavior changes the brain both in health and disease. These advances will be due mainly to the inherent capacity of fmri for repeated measures over longitudinal studies.
#Smoking leads to fivefold increase in heart disease and stroke in under-50ssmoking increases the risk of heart disease
The protection of children and adolescents from taking up smoking is essential to the future health of Europeans
and stronger measures are needed according to the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). The warning comes on World No Tobacco Day held today.
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the number one killer in Europe and is responsible for the death of 1. 9 million EU citizens every year.
and the risk of cardiovascular disease so the younger you are when you start the higher dose you get altogether.
In addition the earlier you start smoking the more addicted you may become and therefore the more difficult it will be to stop smoking later.
#¢Cover at least 75%of the front and back packaging with health warnings on the multiple risks of smoking.
#¢Introduce a requirement for medicine authorisation of all non-tobacco nicotine containing products to prevent promotion to young adults who are nonsmokers.#¢
#¢Regulate electronic cigarettes as a tobacco and medical product. Brands with flavours such as vanilla or chocolate attract children
and adopt optimal public health protection measures. Stopping young people taking up smoking is a key goal of the ESC joint guidelines on prevention of cardiovascular disease. 4 Other recommendations are to avoid smoking
and exposure to passive smoking and that all smokers should be given advice and help to quit.
Passive smoking at home or in the work place increases the risk of CVD by 30%However smoking bans lead to rapid and sizeable reductions in hospitalizations for acute myocardial infarction.
or passive is associated significantly with atherosclerosis.''''She concluded: Prevention of smoking is the most cost-effective way to treat
and prevent cardiovascular disease. This is particularly important for children and adolescents who are susceptible to tobacco promotion
The above story is provided based on materials by European Society of Cardiology (ESC. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length
Gastrointestinal bacteria are important for digestion immune functions and general health. Wouter Van dongen and colleagues from the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology of the Vetmeduni Vienna have collaborated with scientists from the Laboratoire Ãolution
Specifically changing the bottle cap manufacturing process from injection molding to thermoforming may lower environmental impact.
The Iowa State team replaced the initial steaming with ultrasound sonically smashing the corn into tiny particles in the same way physicians use ultrasound to shatter kidney stones.
But small-gaped birds such as thrushes that populate the fragmented patches of forest are unable to swallow
Since crop production consumes more freshwater than any other human activity on the planet the study has significant implications for addressing the twin challenges of water stress
For this project Chakhalian acquired complex oxides from the University of Texas in Austin in close collaboration with chemists John Goodenough and J. G. Cheng.
and illness and death associated with air pollution. That potential exists they say despite serious questions about safety disposal of radioactive waste and diversion of nuclear material for weapons.
and illness and death associated with air pollution. That potential exists they say despite serious questions about safety disposal of radioactive waste and diversion of nuclear material for weapons.
and therefore the risk of cardiovascular disease a pan-Nordic study where Lund University participated has found.
There was also decreased inflammation associated with pre-diabetes. -The subjects who ate a Nordic diet had lower levels of harmful LDL cholesterol and higher levels of good HDL cholesterol.
The amount of harmful fat particles in the blood also declined says Lieselotte Cloetens a biomedical nutrition researcher at Lund University.
#Tobacco companies are not public health stakeholders, experts concludewhen assessing information presented by the tobacco industry the US regulator the Food
and Drug Administration (FDA) and regulatory bodies in other countries should be aware that they are dealing with companies with a long history of intentionally misleading the public.
They therefore should actively protect their public-health policies on smoking from the commercial interests of the tobacco industry
and Germany published in this week's PLOS Medicine. The researchers led by Stanton Glantz from the Center for Tobacco Control Research
and the Institute of Medicine related to the Institute's landmark 2001 report Clearing the smoke--a report that set the tone for the development and regulation of tobacco products in the US particularly those claiming to be less dangerous.
and legal firms to access the IOM proceedings (that led to the FDA-commissioned Institute of Medicine report on tobacco products)
and health consequences of these products are determined in post-marketing surveillance and epidemiological studies (tiered testing).
Recommendations within the report have policy implications that were continuing to reverberate in 2012. The authors say:
There was a lack of clear policy on tobacco industry engagement by the Institute of Medicine which combined with the general presumption of honesty upon
product regulation to the companies'benefit and to the detriment of public health. The authors conclude:
because it is unlikely that the industry will ever be part of the solution to the public health challenge of tobacco use.
Thus the public health community needs to do what it does best: to rally popular support for strong science-based approaches to prevention of tobacco use to expose the truths about the harms of tobacco use to current users
and to support government agencies in carrying out their legislatively mandated duties to protect public health. Notes:**The World health organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control developed in response to the globalization of the tobacco epidemic.
Article 5. 3 relates to the protection of public health policies with respect from tobacco control from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry.**
**Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act is a US federal law that provides for extended criminal penalties
and a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization.
This work was supported by National Cancer Institute grant CA-087472. The funders had no role in study design data collection
and Gerald Oppenheimer Family Center for Neurobiology of Stress and the Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center at UCLA appears in the June edition of the peer-reviewed journal Gastroenterology.
or drug interventions to improve brain function the researchers said. Many of us have a container of yogurt in our refrigerator that we may eat for enjoyment for calcium
or because we think it might help our health in other ways said Dr. Kirsten Tillisch an associate professor of medicine at UCLA's David Geffen School of medicine
which is why stress and other emotions can contribute to gastrointestinal symptoms. This study shows what has been suspected
Time and time again we hear from patients that they never felt depressed or anxious until they started experiencing problems with their gut Tillisch said.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fmri) scans conducted both before and after the four-week study period looked at the women's brains in a state of rest and in response to an emotion-recognition task in
and neurological disorders said Dr. Emeran Mayer a professor of medicine physiology and psychiatry at the David Geffen School of medicine at UCLA and the study's senior author.
Meanwhile Mayer notes that other researchers are studying the potential benefits of certain probiotics in yogurts on mood symptoms such as anxiety.
whether repeated courses of antibiotics can affect the brain as some have speculated. Antibiotics are used extensively in neonatal intensive care units
and in childhood respiratory tract infections and such suppression of the normal microbiota may have longterm consequences on brain development.
Finally as the complexity of the gut flora and its effect on the brain is understood better researchers may find ways to manipulate the intestinal contents to treat chronic pain conditions
or other brain related diseases including potentially Parkinson's disease Alzheimer's disease and autism. Answers will be easier to come by in the near future as the declining cost of profiling a person's microbiota renders such tests more routine Mayer said.
The above story is provided based on materials by University of California Los angeles (UCLA) Health Sciences. Note:
and Department of Animal Science professor at the University of Illinois. From a health standpoint that's a good thing but it can be a problem
#Ugly plants worse for allergy patientsas allergy season continues for Middle Tennessee and much of the nation a largely unknown adage rings true:
the uglier a flower or weed the more allergy-inducing its pollen tends to be.
Ragweed mugwort plantain and pigweed have more than just their unappealing appearance in common--they're some of the worst offenders to allergy sufferers said Robert Valet M d. assistant professor of Medicine and an allergist at Vanderbilt University Medical center's Asthma
Sinus and Allergy Program (ASAP) clinic. Ragweed can produce up to 1 billion pollen grains per plant throughout a pollen season according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.
Of those allergic to pollen-producing plants 75 percent are allergic to ragweed. The relationship between allergy-causing pollens and their flowers is something like a beauty pageant Valet said.
A general rule of thumb is that flowers that smell or look pretty attract insect pollenators so they are not generally important allergens
because their pollen is not airborne. However those that are very ugly or plain are meant to disperse pollen in the wind
which is the route most important for allergy. Valet says allergy season--divided into spring summer
and fall--runs from March to October and doesn't end until the first hard frost.
Of special note to allergy sufferers are Northern grasses including Timothy-grass ryegrass and Kentucky bluegrass and Southern grasses including Bermuda grass and Johnson grass.
--which decreases the pollen in the air temporarily--but once allergy season is underway anything between a moderate
and very high pollen count will aggravate allergy sufferers Valet said. This season started later than last year's
Valet recommends that people with pollen allergies first try over-the-counter allergy medications before talking with their doctor about prescription medications and nose sprays.
For people with known pollen allergies everyday solutions can include taking an antihistamine before doing yard work
If these measures do not relieve the symptoms he suggests going to see an allergist to be tested for specific allergies
and treated accordingly with options including counseling about allergen avoidance medications and allergy shots. Story Source:
The above story is provided based on materials by Vanderbilt University Medical center. The original article was written by Paula Jones. Note:
#Study explores 100 year increase in forestry diseasesas ash dieback disease continues to threaten common ash trees across Europe new research in the Journal of Quaternary Science explores the historic impact of forest diseases to discover
if diseases played a significant factor in vegetation change. The study explores how large-scale pathogen outbreaks were much more infrequent in the past
which suggests the human role in transporting pathogens to new locations such as the international seed trade is a major factor.
The temperate and boreal forests of Europe and North america have been repeated subject to pathogen outbreaks over the last 100 years said Martyn Waller from Kingston University.
Palaeoecology can potentially offer a long-term perspective on such disturbance episodes providing information on their triggers frequency and impact.
or bug and weed killers and solvents is associated likely with a higher risk of developing Parkinson's disease.
The research appears in the May 28 2013 print issue of Neurology the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
or country living and developing Parkinson's in some of the studies said study author Emanuele Cereda MD Phd with the IRCCS University Hospital San Matteo Foundation in Pavia Italy.
For the analysis researchers reviewed 104 studies that looked at exposure to weed fungus rodent or bug killers and solvents and the risk of developing Parkinson's disease.
or weed killers and solvents increased the risk of developing Parkinson's disease by 33 to 80 percent.
In controlled studies exposure to the weed killer paraquat or the fungicides maneb and mancozeb was associated with two times the risk of developing the disease.
and the method of application such as spraying or mixing affected Parkinson's risk said Cereda. However our study suggests that the risk increases in a dose response manner as the length of exposure to these chemicals increases.
The study was supported by the Grigioni Foundation for Parkinson's disease and the IRCCS University Hospital San Matteo Foundation.
Dr. Zakri a national of Malaysia who cochaired 2005's landmark Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and serves also as science advisor to his country's prime minister cited fast-growing evidence that we are hurtling towards irreversible environmental tipping points that once passed would reduce the ability of ecosystems to provide essential goods and services to humankind.
but missing element in the international response to the biodiversity crisis Dr. Zakri told the 7th Trondheim Conference on Biodiversity.
Even barnyard diversity is in declinesome scientists have termed this the sixth great extinction episode in Earth's history according to Dr. Zakri noting that the loss of biodiversity is happening faster and everywhere even among farm animals.
but the latest data classify 22%of domesticated breeds at risk of extinction Dr. Zakri said.
Biodiversity and the Sustainable Development Goalsaccording to Dr. Zakri the most important outcome of last year's Rio+20 international environmental summit of nations was agreement to set new multi-year
For specifics Dr. Zakri commended the Aichi Biodiversity Targets already established through the Convention on Biological Diversity
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