Medindia Health News

Global Internet Authority ICANN Has Been Hacked
UN Chief Starts Tour of Ebola-hit West Africa for Situation Assessment
NASA Revealed the First Global Map Showing CO2 Concentrations in the Atmosphere
Wild Blueberries Neutralizes health Effects of High-fat Diet
Long-term Memory is Not Stored at the Synapses
Ancestors Were Able to See Full-color Spectrum 30 Million Years Ago
Llamas' Blood may Help Fight HIV/AIDS
Mystery of High-latitude Auroras' Origin in Space Revealed
NSAIDs can Prevent Skin Cancer
More Comfortable and Safe New Suits for Ebola Health Workers
Why Some People Have Better Sense of Direction Than Others
6 Percent People Suffer from Internet Addiction
Malarial Parasites may Hide in Human Body Owing to Fast-changing Genes
Killing Rats and Saving Vietnamese Rice Crops
Studies Reveal That Instant-start Computers are a Possibility
List Of 10 Science Breakthroughs Of 2014 Released
Regular Use of Ibuprofen may Add Up to 10 Yrs to Lifespan
Stem Cell Scandal Makes Japanese Scientist Resigns
Old and Small Cars for Teenagers Could be a Big Risk, Says Experts
Experimental Drug and Advanced Intensive Care Saves Ugandan Physician
Height of Ignorance Displayed by Chinese Vilagers

Global Internet Authority ICANN Has Been Hacked

Posted:

Global internet authority ICANN that allocates IP addresses and domain names for the internet has reportedly been hacked in late November. Employees received emails from the organizations' own domain after it was hacked owing to which they gave up their credentials. The hackers were able to breach a wide range of user information including real names, addresses, emails, telephones and usernames. They accessed internal emails, a members-only Wiki page containing ...

UN Chief Starts Tour of Ebola-hit West Africa for Situation Assessment

Posted:

On Friday, UN chief Ban Ki-moon arrived in Liberia on the first stop of a visit to Ebola-hit West African countries for a first-hand assessment of global efforts to fight the epidemic. Ban, who flew in from Ghana, where the UN Ebola mission is headquartered, was welcomed on arrival in Monrovia by Liberian Vice President Joseph Boakai will full military honours. Ban will also travel to Guinea, Sierra Leone and Mali, where the UN is leading the response ...

NASA Revealed the First Global Map Showing CO2 Concentrations in the Atmosphere

Posted:

The NASA satellite, known as OCO-2, has revealed the first global map showing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. The map is created using newest carbon dioxide-monitoring satellite's data and is one of the most detailed views of CO2 ever created. Paul Wennberg, a professor at Caltech, said, "Measuring an atmospheric gas to a fraction of a percent makes OCO-2 one of the most challenging remote sensing missions that have ever been attempted." The map shows ...

Wild Blueberries Neutralizes health Effects of High-fat Diet

Posted:

A new study has revealed that the adverse effects of a high-fat diet can be diminished by eating blueberries, as they were shown to have beneficial effects on both blood pressure and nutrition-derived inflammatory responses. According to a recent study at the University of Eastern Finland, low-grade inflammation and elevated blood pressure are often associated with obesity-related diseases and the study focused on the health effects of blueberries on mice that were ...

Long-term Memory is Not Stored at the Synapses

Posted:

Researchers at ULCA have found that lost memories can be restored offering some hope for patients in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. Most neuroscientists believe that memories are stored at the synapses, the connections between brain cells, or neurons which are destroyed by Alzheimer's disease. The new study provides evidence that long-term memory is not stored at synapses. As long as the neurons are alive, the memory will still be there, which means it could ...

Ancestors Were Able to See Full-color Spectrum 30 Million Years Ago

Posted:

Our ancestors had evolved the ability to see the full-color spectrum of visible light, except for UV around 30 million years ago; a new study has demonstrated. The scientists have finished a detailed and complete picture of the evolution of human color vision. PLOS Genetics published the final pieces of this picture: The process for how humans switched from ultraviolet (UV) vision to violet vision, or the ability to see blue light. Lead author Shozo ...

Llamas' Blood may Help Fight HIV/AIDS

Posted:

Scientists have found that Ilamas' blood can help fight against HIV/AIDS in a new study. After initial disappointment that HIV vaccine candidates were unable to elicit neutralizing antibodies, researchers found that some HIV-infected individuals did produce them. The current challenge is therefore to find safe and effective vaccine formulations (as opposed to HIV infection) that trigger the development of neutralizing antibodies that can recognize and prevent infection ...

Mystery of High-latitude Auroras' Origin in Space Revealed

Posted:

ESA's Cluster and NASA's Image satellites have worked together to explain the most visible manifestation of the Sun's effect on Earth, a particular type of very high-latitude aurora. Although separated by some 150 million kilometers, the Sun and Earth are connected by the solar wind. This stream of plasma, electrically charged atomic particles, is launched by the Sun and travels across the solar system, carrying its own magnetic field with it. Depending ...

NSAIDs can Prevent Skin Cancer

Posted:

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) have the potential to prevent squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and could be particularly beneficial to people at high risk of developing these cancers, according to scientists at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute. Squamous cell carcinoma is one of the most frequently occurring cancers world-wide. Dr Catherine Olsen said, "Clinicians can now take this into consideration when prescribing anti-inflammatory medication ...

More Comfortable and Safe New Suits for Ebola Health Workers

Posted:

Relief could soon be on the way for health care workers on the front lines of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, risking their lives in stifling protective suits. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have developed a new-style outfit that is not only more comfortable, but also less likely to accidentally infect its users. Conceived during a weekend hackathon in October, it has just won funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), ...

Why Some People Have Better Sense of Direction Than Others

Posted:

Scientists have explained why some people are better navigators, by locating the part of brain that helps human navigate. The study from University College London shows that the strength and reliability of "homing signals" in the human brain vary among people and can predict navigational ability. The research reveals that the part of the brain that signals which direction a person is facing, called the entorhinal region, is also used to signal the direction ...

6 Percent People Suffer from Internet Addiction

Posted:

6 percent of the global population suffers from internet addiction (IA), according to researchers from Hong Kong. The researchers found an inverse relationship between quality of life and internet addiction. However, they were unable to find support for the hypothesis that high Internet accessibility (such as the high penetration rates in Northern and Western Europe), promote internet addiction. The prevalence of internet addiction varies among regions around the world, ...

Malarial Parasites may Hide in Human Body Owing to Fast-changing Genes

Posted:

Fast-changing genes help malarial parasites hide in the human body, a new study has revealed. The study from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute revealed that parasites can rapidly change the proteins on the surface of their host cells during the course of a single infection in order to hide from the immune system. In the study, Plasmodium falciparum parasites were kept dividing in human blood for over a year in the laboratory, with the full parasite ...

Killing Rats and Saving Vietnamese Rice Crops

Posted:

Tran Quang Thieu spent his day catching 10 kilos of rats caught in rice paddies near Hanoi. A menace to Vietnam's rice crop, the vermin are regularly trapped and sometimes eaten. In his village of Van Binh, on the outskirts of Hanoi, Thieu and his team work night and day in the area's rice paddies. They estimate 20 percent of the annual grain crop is lost to hungry rats. Rice is an essential part of the Vietnamese economy, the communist country is the ...

Studies Reveal That Instant-start Computers are a Possibility

Posted:

Instant-start computers are possible with new breakthrough, a new study has revealed. To encode data, today's computer memory technology uses electric currents - a major limiting factor for reliability and shrinkability, and the source of significant power consumption and if data could instead be encoded without current for example, by an electric field applied across an insulator, it would require much less energy, and make things like low-power, instant-on computing ...

List Of 10 Science Breakthroughs Of 2014 Released

Posted:

The top 10 breakthroughs in the field of Science have been listed down which also includes the Rosetta spacecraft and comet landing. The annual list of groundbreaking scientific achievements, selected by Science and its international nonprofit publisher, AAAS, also includes groundbreaking advances in medicine, robotics, synthetic biology, and paleontology, to name a few. Tim Appenzeller, news editor of the journal Science, said that Philae's landing ...

Regular Use of Ibuprofen may Add Up to 10 Yrs to Lifespan

Posted:

A new study says using ibuprofen regularly can extend the lifespan by up to 10 years. Dr. Michael Polymenis, an AgriLife Research biochemist in College Station said that they first used baker's yeast, which is an established aging model and then tried the same process with worms and flies and saw that not only did the organisms lived longer, but they also appeared healthy. He said the treatment, given at doses comparable to the recommended human dose, ...

Stem Cell Scandal Makes Japanese Scientist Resigns

Posted:

A Japanese researcher said on Friday that she would resign, after failing to reproduce results of what was once billed as a ground-breaking study on stem cells and was embroiled in a fabrication scandal that has rocked Japan's scientific establishment. Haruko Obokata said she was dismayed that new laboratory tests have not been able to repeat her experiments, which she had claimed showed the successful conversion of an adult cell into a stem cell-like state. "I ...

Old and Small Cars for Teenagers Could be a Big Risk, Says Experts

Posted:

Experts in the British journal Injury Prevention, on Friday, warned that parents who want to buy a small old car for their teenager could be putting their child at risk. A survey of drivers aged 15 to 17 killed in US crashes from 2008 to 2013 found that 48 percent of the fatalities had been driving vehicles that were 11 or more years old. Their cars were typically small and often lacked important safety features found in more recent models likelier to ...

Experimental Drug and Advanced Intensive Care Saves Ugandan Physician

Posted:

An Ugandan physician with Ebola who had been airlifted from Sierra Leone has been saved by a team of German doctors on Friday using an experimental drug together with advanced intensive care. A prototype drug called FX06, designed to stop hemorrhage, was given to the patient after the doctors got special authorization from their hospital's ethics committee, they reported in The Lancet. "Even though the patient was critically ill, we were able to support ...

Height of Ignorance Displayed by Chinese Vilagers

Posted:

The shunning of an eight-year-old Chinese boy with HIV, from his village by 200 petitioners has sparked intense online soul-searching Thursday in a country where discrimination against sufferers remains rife. The boy's guardian, his grandfather, was among those in southwestern Sichuan province who signed an agreement to expel the child to "protect villagers' health", the Global Times reported. The newspaper, which has close ties to the ruling Communist ...