ScienceDaily for October 29, 2010 reported on the possibility of exoplanets similar to our earth.
They measured the numbers of planets falling into five groups, ranging from 1,000 times the mass of Earth, or about three times the mass of Jupiter, down to three times the mass of Earth. The search was confined to planets orbiting close to their stars -- within 0.25 astronomical units, or a quarter of the distance between our sun and Earth.
ScienceDaily for October 27, 2010 reported on obesity and pre-schoolers.
Spence and his team recruited 1730 Canadian children into the study -- an equal mix of boys and girls, and four- and five-year-olds -- via immunization clinics from 2005 to 2007 when they came for their pre-school vaccinations. Kids were classified according to body weight status and parents asked to complete the UK-developed Children's Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (CEBQ), which has been used in European studies to establish the relationship between food behaviours and body weight in children.
ScienceDaily for October 26, 2010 reported on chemicals given off by scented products.
Manufacturers are not required to disclose any ingredients in cleaning supplies, air fresheners or laundry products, all of which are regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Neither these nor personal care products, which are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, are required to list ingredients used in fragrances, even though a single "fragrance" in a product can be a mixture of up to several hundred ingredients, Steinemann said.
ScienceDaily for October 24, 2010 reported on weight of fathers and obesity in offspring.
"But until now, the impact of the father's environment -- in terms of his diet -- on his offspring had not been investigated." The work formed the basis of the PhD study of Dr Sheau-Fang Ng, who showed that paternal environmental factors such as diet and weight are important contributors to disease in the next generation.
ScienceDaily for October 24, 2010 reported on vitamin E and Prostate Cancer.
Dr Patrick Ling, whose research will be a centrepiece of the new $354 million Translational Research Institute (TRI) when it opens in Brisbane, is leading a team of researchers who have identified a particular constituent of vitamin E, known as tocotrienol (T3), which can inhibit the growth of prostate tumours.
ScienceDaily for October 22, 2010 reported on water ice on the Moon.
"The temperatures inside these permanently shadowed craters are even colder than we had expected," Paige said. "Our model results indicate that in these extreme cold conditions, surface deposits of water ice would almost certainly be stable; but perhaps more significantly, these areas are surrounded by much larger permafrost regions where ice could be stable just beneath the surface."
ScienceDaily for October 20, 2010 reported on the effect of alcohol on reaction times and decision making.
According to Beth Anderson, a postdoctoral fellow at the Olin Neuropsychiatry Research Centre at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut and lead author of the paper, this research is only the first step in a much larger process."Alcohol is widely consumed in our society today. We know it alters behavior, but surprisingly it is not well studied at the brain level. Once we understand how it is altering the brain, we can better inform the public of the consequences of drinking alcohol."
ScienceDaily for October 21, 2010 reported on ingredients in moon-soil.
In one of the papers, Brown planetary geologist Peter Schultz and graduate student Brendan Hermalyn, along with NASA scientists, write that the cloud kicked up by the rocket's impact showed the Moon's soil and subsurface is more complex than believed: Not only did the lunar regolith -- the soil -- contain water, it also harbored other compounds, such as hydroxyl, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, ammonia, free sodium, and, in a surprise, silver.
ScienceDaily for October 20, 2010 reported on alcohol and adolescents.
Alcohol, to an adolescent, is often seen as a rite of passage. Many teenagers view alcohol (as well as other drugs) as a gateway to adulthood, but are often blissfully unaware of the damage that it can cause to their bodies. A new study of the effects of excessive alcohol and other drugs in adolescents has shown that both alcohol and marijuana overuse can cause serious detrimental effects on the development of the teenage mind.
ScienceDaily for October 20,m2010 reported on vitamin D and lung transplants.
Patients who undergo lung transplants are at risk for rejecting the organ, and 77 percent of these patients are vitamin D deficient. Researchers believe that vitamin D helps the immune system tolerate the organ. Thus optimal levels of this supplement are critical for positive outcomes.
ScienceDaily for October 20, 2010 reported on the harmful effects of "safer" cigarettes.
"Harm reduction products are not necessarily safer than their conventional counterparts," said Prue Talbot, the director of UC Riverside's Stem Cell Center and the research team leader. "Our analyses show there is significant toxicity in harm reduction products, and our data show that reduction of carcinogens in harm reduction mainstream smoke does not necessarily reduce the toxicity of unfiltered sidestream smoke."
ScienceDaily for October 20, 2010 reported on benefits from eating more whole grains and less refined grains.
Visceral fat surrounds the intra-abdominal organs while subcutaneous fat is found just beneath the skin. "Prior research suggests visceral fat is more closely tied to the development of metabolic syndrome, a cluster of risk factors including hypertension, unhealthy cholesterol levels and insulin resistance that can develop into cardiovascular disease or type 2 diabetes," explains co-author Paul Jacques, DSc, director of the Nutritional Epidemiology Program at the USDA HNRCA and a professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts. "Not surprisingly, when we compared the relationship of both visceral fat tissue and subcutaneous fat tissue to whole and refined grain intake, we saw a more striking association with visceral fat. The association persisted after we accounted for other lifestyle factors such as smoking, alcohol intake, fruit and vegetableintake, percentage of calories from fat and physical activity."
ScienceDaily for October 19, 2010 reported on effects of TV and video games on teenagers.
Although previous research has suggested that people can become more aggressive and desensitised to real-life violence after repeatedly viewing violent media programmes, little is known about how the extent of watching such programmes and the severity of the aggression displayed affects the brains of adolescents. "It is especially important to understand this because adolescence is a time when the brain is changing and developing, particularly in the parts of the brain that control emotions, emotional behaviour and responses to external events," said Dr Jordan Grafman, who led the research.
ScienceDaily for October 14, 2010 reported on health benefits from eating watermelon.
No matter how you slice it, watermelon has a lot going for it -- sweet, low calorie, high fiber, nutrient rich -- and now, there's more. Evidence from a pilot study led by food scientists at The Florida State University suggests that watermelon can be an effective natural weapon against prehypertension, a precursor to cardiovascular disease.
ScienceDaily for October 17, 2010 reported on a new way to see exoplanets close to their star.
Installed on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, or VLT, atop Paranal Mountain in Chile, the new technology enabled an international team of astronomers to confirm the existence and orbital movement of Beta Pictoris b, a planet about seven to 10 times the mass of Jupiter, around its parent star, Beta Pictoris, 63 light years away.
ScienceDaily for October 16, 2010 reported on effects of alcohol consumption during pregnancy.
Scientific data continue to indicate that higher intake of alcohol during pregnancy adversely affects the fetus, and could lead to very severe developmental or other problems in the child. However, most recent publications show little or no effects of occasional or light drinking by the mother during pregnancy. The studies also demonstrate how socio-economic, education, and other lifestyle factors of the mother may have large effects on the health of the fetus and child; these must be considered when evaluating the potential effects of alcohol during pregnancy.
ScienceDaily for October 14, 2010 reported on walking and our memory.
"Brain size shrinks in late adulthood, which can cause memory problems. Our results should encourage well-designed trials of physical exercise in older adults as a promising approach for preventing dementia and Alzheimer's disease," said study author Kirk I. Erickson, PhD, with the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh.
ScienceDaily for October 14, 2010 reported on love as a pain-killer.
"It turns out that the areas of the brain activated by intense love are the same areas that drugs use to reduce pain," said Arthur Aron, PhD, a professor of psychology at State University of New York at Stony Brook and one of the study's authors. Aron has been studying love for 30 years. "When thinking about your beloved, there is intense activation in the reward area of the brain -- the same area that lights up when you take cocaine, the same area that lights up when you win a lot of money."
ScienceDaily for October 14, 2010 reported on teenagers and sports.
Although the benefits of physical activity are well documented among teenagers, middle school children are an understudied population in adolescent physical activity research. The authors explored the relationship between physical activity (including sports participation), life satisfaction and self-rated health concurrently, for the first time, among 245 middle school students in grades 7 and 8. The 12- to 14-year-old boys and girls were asked to fill in questionnaires assessing their physical activity levels, their overall satisfaction with life and asking them to describe their own health.
ScienceDaily for October 14m 2010 reported on obesity in children.
The researchers, whose results appear in the early online edition of the International Journal of Obesity, found that children with high waist circumference values (in the top 25 percent for their age and sex) were five to six times more likely than children with low waist circumferences (in the bottom 25 percent) to develop metabolic syndrome by early adulthood. Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of key cardiovascular risk factors and is associated with an increased risk of subsequent coronary artery disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes.
ScienceDaily for October 14, 2010 reported on working mothers.
"Overall, I think this shows women who go back to work soon after they have their children should not be too concerned about the effects their employment has on their children's long-term well-being," said psychologist Rachel Lucas-Thompson, PhD, lead author of the study conducted with Drs. JoAnn Prause and Wendy Goldberg at the University of California, Irvine.
ScienceDaily
for October 12, 2010 reported on the effect of light on our body becoming obese.
"Although there were no differences in activity levels or daily consumption of food, the mice that lived with light at night were getting fatter than the others," said Laura Fonken, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in neuroscience at Ohio State University.
ScienceDaily for October 11, 2010 reported on new fossil evidence of an ancient mammal.
University of Florida researchers presenting new fossil evidence of an exceptionally well-preserved 55-million-year-old North American mammal have found it shares a common ancestor with rodents and primates, including humans.
ScienceDaily for October 10, 2010 reported on the effect of UV on sun creams.
"We know that sun creams pass through the skin into our bodies, but we don't know what effects they have on us," says Isabella Karlsson, doctoral student at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Gothenburg's Faculty of Science. "Many of them actually break down in the presence of sunlight. We therefore wanted to look at what can happen to the chemical sun protection agents when exposed to UV rays, and how the degradation products that form affect the skin."
ScienceDaily for October 9, 2010 reported on youths who lash out at others.
When people are rejected by peers, they often lash out. In children, that aggression occasionally takes horrifying directions, leading to school shootings or other deadly acts. Researchers in the Netherlands found that some children are more likely than others to lash out in response to acute peer rejection: children who already feel like outcasts.
ScienceDaily for October 8, 2010 reported on the atmosphere of Saturn's moon, Titan.
The results suggest not only that Titan's atmosphere could be a reservoir of prebiotic molecules that serve as the springboard to life, but they offer a new perspective on the emergence of terrestrial life as well: Instead of coalescing in a primordial soup, the first ingredients of life on our planet may have rained down from a primordial haze high in the atmosphere.
ScienceDaily for October 6, 2010 reported on chemicals in mother's blood and the child's obesity.
Babies whose mothers had relatively high levels of the chemical DDE in their blood were more likely to both grow rapidly during their first 6 months and to have a high body mass index (BMI) by 14 months, according to a team of scientists based in Barcelona, Spain. DDE, an endocrine disruptor, is a by-product of the pesticide DDT.
ScienceDaily for October 7, 2010 reported on iron and Alzheimer's.
Today it is clear that, under healthy conditions, iron and APP keep each other in check: If there's too much iron in a brain cell, more APP is made, and then APP and a partner molecule escort excess iron out. And, as the team reported last month in a related paper in the journal Cell, if there's too little iron, fewer APP molecules are made available to help escort iron out. As a result, iron accumulates, and the process begins again in a feedback loop.
An article in ScienceDaily for October 7, 2010 reported on drinking and pregnancy.
Light drinking during pregnancy does not harm a young child's behavioural or intellectual development, reveals research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
ScienceDaily for October 7, 2010 reported on water and ice found in an asteroid.
"This discovery suggests that this region of our solar system contains more water ice than anticipated," said University of Central Florida Professor Humberto Campins. "And it supports the theory that asteroids may have hit Earth and brought our planet its water and the building blocks for life to form and evolve here."
ScienceDaily for October 7, 2010 reported on herbs and anxiety.
Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access Nutrition Journal pooled the results of 24 studies involving a total of more than 2000 participants, showing that some nutritional and herbal supplements can be effective, without the risk of serious side effects.
ScienceDaily for October 7, 2010 reported on volcanoes and the Neanderthals.
Geological layers containing the ashes also hold evidence of an abrupt and potentially devastating climate change. Sediment samples from the two layers reveal greatly reduced pollen concentrations compared to surrounding layers. That's an indication of a dramatic shift to a cooler and dryer climate, the researchers say. Further, the second of the two eruptions seems to mark the end of Neanderthal presence at Mezmaiskaya. Numerous Neanderthal bones, stone tools, and the bones of prey animals have been found in the geological layers below the second ash deposit, but none are found above it.
ScienceDaily for October 7, 2010 reported on waist-size and diabetes.
"Americans carry more fat around their middle sections than the English, and that was the single factor that explained most of the higher rate of diabetes seen in the United States, especially among American women," said James P. Smith, one of the study's author and corporate chair of economics at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "Waist size is the missing new risk factor we should be studying."
ScienceDaily for October 5, 2010 reported on Testosterone levels and Alzheimer's.
"Having low testosterone may make you more vulnerable to Alzheimer's disease," said John E. Morley, M.D., director of the division of geriatric medicine at Saint Louis University and a study co-investigator. "The take-home message is we should pay more attention to low testosterone, particularly in people who have memory problems or other signs of cognitive impairment."
ScienceDaily for October 6, 2010 reported on high doses of fish oil ad colon cancer.
"Our findings support a growing body of literature implicating harmful effects of high doses of fish oil consumption in relation to certain diseases," Fenton said. "Currently, there is a call by academics and the food industry to establish dietary guidelines for omega-3 consumption. This is primarily motivated by the fact that most Americans are deficient in omega-3 fatty acids, and there is substantial evidence supporting the beneficial effects of the consumption."
ScienceDaily for October 5, 2010 reported on vitamin D and bone density in children.
The researchers set out to discover whether boosting levels of vitamin D in healthy children encouraged their bones to lay down greater amounts of calcium. They searched existing literature for carefully conducted (randomised controlled trials) research studies that had compared giving children vitamin D supplements with giving placebo. They found six studies that together involved 343 participants receiving placebo and 541 receiving vitamin D. All participants had taken vitamin D or the placebo for at least three months and were aged between one month and 19 years old.
ScienceDaily for October 6, 2010 reported on vitamin D and surgery.
"In the perfect world, test levels, fix and then operate," said Joseph Lane, M.D., professor of Orthopedic Surgery and chief of the Metabolic Bone Disease Service at HSS, who led the study. "If you put people on 2,000-4,000 [milligrams] of vitamin D based on what their deficient value was, you can usually get them corrected in four to six weeks, which is when you are really going to need the vitamin D. If you are really aggressive right before surgery, you can correct deficient levels quickly, but you have to correct it, measure it, and then act on it."
ScienceDaily for October 5, 2010 reported on Neanderthals and their emotions.
The archaeologists studied archaeological evidence and used this to propose a four stage model for the development of human compassion. It begins six million years ago when the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees experienced the first awakenings of an empathy for others and motivation to 'help' them, perhaps with a gesture of comfort or moving a branch to allow them to pass.A World Science article is here.
ScienceDaily for October 4, 2010 reported on cells and aging.
Like cats, human cells have a finite number of lives: once they divide a certain number of times (thankfully, more than nine) they change shape, slow their pace, and eventually stop dividing -- a phenomenon called "cellular senescence."
ScienceDaily for October 4, 2010 reported on walnuts and stress.
Previous studies have shown that omega-3 fatty acids -- like the alpha linolenic acid found in walnuts and flax seeds -- can reduce low density lipoproteins (LDL) -- bad cholesterol. These foods may also reduce c-reactive protein and other markers of inflammation. for October 4, 2010 reported on walnuts and stress.
ScienceDaily for October 5, 2010 reported on fat thighs vs. fat abdomens.
Using ice cream, candy bars and energy drinks to help volunteers gain weight, Mayo Clinic researchers have discovered the mechanisms of how body fat grows. Increased abdominal fat seems to heighten risk for metabolic disease, while fat expansion in the lower body -- as in the thighs -- seems to lower the risk. The findings, appearing in the October 4 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), help explain
why.
ScienceDaily for October 1, 2010 reported on the disappearance of the Clovis people.
Writing in the October issue of Current Anthropology, archaeologists Vance Holliday (University of Arizona) and David Meltzer (Southern Methodist University) argue that there is nothing in the archaeological record to suggest an abrupt collapse of Clovis populations. "Whether or not the proposed extraterrestrial impact occurred is a matter for empirical testing in the geological record," the researchers write. "Insofar as concerns the archaeological record, an extraterrestrial impact is an unnecessary solution for an archaeological problem that does not exist."
ScienceDaily for October 3, 2010 reported on adult stem cells.
Biomedical researchers at the University at Buffalo have engineered adult stem cells that scientists can grow continuously in culture, a discovery that could speed development of cost-effective treatments for diseases including heart disease, diabetes, immune disorders and neurodegenerative diseases.
ScienceDaily for October 1, 2010 reported on research to reduce the nicotine in tobacco.
According to this new report, reducing the amount of nicotine in cigarettes to non-addictive levels could have a significant public health impact on prevention and smoking cessation. Over time, the move could dramatically reduce the number of annual deaths related to cigarette smoking by decreasing adolescent experimentation with cigarettes preventing a progression to addiction, and by reducing dependence on tobacco among currently addicted smokers of all ages.
ScienceDaily for October 1, 2010 reported on the amount of sleep women should get.
A new study, derived from novel sleep research conducted by University of California, San Diego researchers 14 years earlier, suggests that the secret to a long life may come with just enough sleep. Less than five hours a night is probably not enough; eight hours is probably too much.
ScienceDaily for October 1, 2010 reported on dental care and heart disease.
"Many studies have found associations between dental care and cardiovascular disease, but our study is the first to show that general dental care leads to fewer heart attacks, strokes, and other adverse cardiovascular
outcomes in a causal way," said study lead author Timothy Brown, assistant adjunct professor of health policy and management at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health.
ScienceDaily for October 1, 2010 reported on hormone replacement and breast cancer.
Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers, affecting up to one in eight women during their lives in Europe, the UK and USA. Large population studies such as the Women's Health Initiative and the Million Women Study have shown that synthetic sex hormones called progestins used in hormone replacement therapy, HRT, and in contraceptives can increase the risk of breast cancers.
ScienceDaily for October 1, 2010 reported on garlic oil and heart disease.
Wei-Wen Kuo and colleagues note that people with diabetes have at least twice the risk of death from heart disease as others, with heart disease accounting for 80 percent of all diabetes-related deaths. They are especially vulnerable to a form of heart disease termed diabetic cardiomyopathy, which inflames and weakens the heart's muscle tissue. Kuo's group had hints from past studies that garlic might protect against heart disease in general and also help control the abnormally high blood sugar levels that occur in diabetes. But they realized that few studies had been done specifically on garlic's effects on diabetic cardiomyopathy.
ScienceDaily for September 30, 2010 reported on a new laser to test the mineral content of rocks on Mars.
The NASA Mars Science Laboratory Project's rover, Curiosity, will carry a newly delivered laser instrument named ChemCam to reveal what elements are present in rocks and soils on Mars up to 7 meters (23 feet) away from the rover.
ScienceDaily for September 30, 2010 reported on the testing of the atmosphere of Mars.
"It is currently one Mars year before the Mars Science Laboratory arrival season," said atmospheric scientist David Kass of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "This campaign will provide a set of observations to support the Mars Science Laboratory engineering team and Mars atmospheric modelers. The information will constrain the expected climate at their landing season. It will also help define the range of possible weather conditions on landing day."
ScienceDaily
for September 30, 2010 reported on research into building foundations and soil.
The key to the stability of any building is its foundation, but it is difficult to test some building sites in advance -- such as those on the moon. New research from North Carolina State University is helping resolve the problem by using computer models that can utilize a small sample of soil to answer fundamental questions about how soil at a building site will interact with foundations.
ScienceDaily for September 29, 2010 reported on a possible meteorite on Mars.
"The dark color, rounded texture and the way it is perched on the surface all make it look like an iron meteorite," said science-team member Matt Golombek of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Opportunity has found four iron meteorites during the rover's exploration of the Meridiani Planum region of Mars since early 2004. Examination of these rocks has provided information about the Martian atmosphere, as well as the meteorites themselves.
ScienceDaily for September 30, 2010 reported on blueberries and artery hardening.
Atherosclerosis is the leading cause of two forms of cardiovascular disease--heart attacks and strokes. Cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of Americans.
ScienceDaily for September 30, 2010 reported on obesity and overeating.
Obese individuals have fewer pleasure receptors and overeat to compensate, according to a study by University of Texas at Austin senior research fellow and Oregon Research Institute senior scientist Eric Stice and his colleagues published in The Journal of Neuroscience.
ScienceDaily for September 29, 2010 reported on alcohol use in the US.
The findings, Dr. Caetano said, suggest that continuous monitoring of alcohol consumption levels is needed to understand better the factors that affect consumption. Monitoring also would help to detect as early as possible signs that rates of risky drinking behaviors such as binge drinking or drinking to intoxication may be increasing, said Dr. Caetano, who also is regional dean of the UT School of Public Health's campus in Dallas.
