Chicago
In one of Chicago's poorest neighborhoods, a little girl with pigtails and a denim jumper stands in front of a table and fingers the shape of wooden letters as she fits them into a puzzle. In the next room, her mother talks to a parent-resource teacher about taking the GED and how she can help her daughter with homework. According to a new study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, this type of learning environment does more than strengthen skills - it helps cut the rate at which enrolled children will be abused or neglected by their parents or caregivers. The findings, published in the current issue of the journal Child Development, provide new evidence that preschool programs can impact not just school readiness, but long-term family outcomes.
Trying to separate science from mythology, two researchers have put to rest several longstanding myths concerning the museum's infamous Tsavo lions. They propose alternative scenarios based on comprehensive reviews of historical literature, game department records, unpublished journals, and museum specimens. First, the Tsavo lions were not 'aberrant'. Lions and other big cats have repeatedly turned to man-eating in the face of certain conditions, many of which are manmade. Furthermore, man-eating by lions continues today.
Surgeons at University Hospitals of Cleveland have demonstrated that the risk of brain damage associated with the use of the heart lung machine can be significantly reduced by modifying the traditional placement of cannulas (tubing) for returning blood flow to the patient. The findings were presented last month at the American Heart Association's annual Scientific Sessions conference in Chicago, Ill.
By taking continuous electrocardiogram (ECG) readings for 24 hours after treating heart attack patients, researches have shown that giving a combination of a new drug that prevents platelets from clumping together, as well as a clot-busting drug, opens up clogged arteries faster and keeps them open longer.
Researchers have shown that an age-related loss of specific stem cells that continually repair damage to blood vessels is critical to determining the onset and progression of atherosclerosis. Stem cells are immature cells that have the potential to mature into a variety of different cells. This novel view of the disease, based on experiments in mice, constitutes a potential new avenue in the treatment of one of the leading causes of death and illness in the U.S., the researchers said.
The American Heart Association has issued a statement on a recent study announcing positive results from an Atkins-like, low-carbohydrate diet. "Media reports about a small study funded by the Robert C. Atkins Foundation may have created the erroneous impression that the American Heart Association has revised its dietary guidelines. This is not the case. This study was released as one of over 3,600 abstracts presented at the American Heart Association's annual Scientific Sessions, a forum for the presentation of research pertaining to heart disease and stroke for scientists and physicians. These scientific abstracts do not represent official positions or statements of the American Heart Association....
The rate of life-threatening heart rhythms more than doubled among New York heart patients the month after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, researchers have reported. The study evaluated patients with an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD). An ICD is an electrical generator the size of a pocket watch that is inserted into the heart to monitor heart rhythm. It detects life-threatening abnormal rhythms, called arrhythmias, and delivers an electrical shock to restore normal rhythm.
An electrical problem in the heart may cause one out of 20 cases of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), researchers have reported.
The problem is similar to a heart condition called long Q-T syndrome that contributes to sudden death in young people and adults. In long Q-T syndrome, the heart electrically recharges itself too slowly or in a disorganized fashion in preparation for the next heartbeat. When combined with a trigger, such as intense emotion or physical exertion, a long Q-T heart can go out of control and cause cardiac arrest and sudden death.
Bone marrow cells implanted into blood-starved legs formed new blood vessels, increased blood flow and prevented amputation in people with peripheral artery disease, researchers have reported. "This is the first multicenter and double-blind clinical study to prove the clinical efficacy of growing new blood vessels using bone marrow cell transplantation,? says the study's lead author Hiroya Masaki M.D., Ph.D. He hopes that transplanting bone marrow cells will establish a new therapy for peripheral artery disease (PAD).
Despite recent reports that hormone therapy does not offer protection for post-menopausal females against heart disease and heart attack, researchers from Duke University Medical Center have determined in mouse studies that non-hormone treated pre-menopausal females are, in fact, better protected from cardiac damage following ischemia compared to their male counterparts. The findings suggest that research should continue toward finding better ways to treat post-menopausal women to maintain such cardiac protection, the researchers said.
The first direct evidence that muscle cells transplanted from within a heart patient's body could help heal their damaged heart muscle is being reported today. In the study, a small sample of cells from patients' thigh muscles were taken, and "satellite" myoblast cells were isolated and grown in culture until they multiplied. These cells were then injected into the hearts of four patients who were receiving heart-assisting implants to help them survive until they could get a heart transplant. The results showed that the injected cells not only survived in their new environment, but began to form muscle fibers.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of the brain show that despite the decrease in brain activity that naturally occurs in aging, particularly in the language areas of the left frontal lobe, some types of language processing may be performed more efficiently in older individuals.
Smoking may play a dual role in the development of a cancer of the lymph glands called follicular lymphoma -- first causing it to develop and then transforming it into diffuse large cell lymphoma, an aggressive cancer generally associated with a poor prognosis.
A new analysis of a major study of childhood nutrition shows that early sexually-maturing girls are more likely than other girls to be obese, while in boys early developers are less likely to be obese than other males. Although previous studies have suggested that sexual maturity is associated with obesity in females, little was known about the relationship in boys until now
The use of live bacteria to treat cancer goes back a hundred years. But while the therapy can sometimes shrink tumors, the treatment usually leads to toxicity, limiting its value in medicine. Now, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have isolated a protein secreted by bacteria that kills cancer cells but appears to have no harmful side effects. Tested in mice injected with human melanomas, the protein shrank the malignancies, but, in contrast with other studies using whole bacteria, caused no deaths or adverse reactions in the laboratory animals.
