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Games are Good for Health and Well Being of Employees

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Games are a good way to improve the well-being of employees, and reduce employers' direct and indirect health care costs. According to an Editorial in Games for Health Journal a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc, employers can more readily reap these benefits by offering game-based services that educate their employees about health and wellness and improve physical and psychological fitness. "Wellness programs using health games ...

Rural Bangladeshi Women Like to Cook Using Traditional Stoves

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Women in rural Bangladesh like to use traditional stoves for cooking even though they are aware of the health risks, reveals a recent study. A large majority of respondents-94 percent-believed that indoor smoke from the traditional stoves is harmful, but less so than polluted water (76 percent) and spoiled food (66 percent). Still, Bangladeshi women opted for traditional cookstove technology so they could afford basic needs. "Nontraditional cookstoves ...

Novel Method to Test the Safety of Natural and Synthetic Chemicals

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A novel way of testing the safety of natural and synthetic chemicals has been developed by scientists. The researchers, led by Professor Awadhesh Jha of Plymouth University, have managed to coax cells from the liver of a rainbow trout to form a ball-shaped structure called a spheroid in a petri dish. This ball of cells behaves much more like normal animal tissue than cells grown in traditional ways in the lab and so can give researchers a more accurate picture of ...

Understanding How Parkinson's Disease Spreads Through the Brain

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Scientists now have a deep understanding about how Parkinson's disease spreads through the brain. Experiments in rat models uncover a process previously used to explain mad cow disease, in which misfolded proteins travel from sick to healthy cells. This model has never before been identified so clearly in a living organism, and the breakthrough brings researchers one step closer to a disease-modifying drug for Parkinson's. "Parkinson's is ...

Recent Social Network Game Allows Users to Have Virtual Sex

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The new Zynga game 'The Ville' allows people to have virtual sex and appears to be inspired by the popular game 'The Sims'. The game is the most realistic yet in the Ville series of games that includes FarmVille, CityVille, and CastleVille. The concept is that you build your dream house in the app, and then invite your pals over to hang out. According to Zynga executive producer David Gray, in the game when someone is in people's house and ...

New Finding may Help Balding Men Regrow Hair

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A recent finding may help scientists with a new treatment to tackle thinning hairs. Trichologists now claim to have identified a way of waking the follicles up again to help restore a fuller head of hair to people who are going bald. Bruno Bernard, head of hair biology at L'Oreal in Paris who carried out the research, has now announced that the company is developing a new treatment that can be applied to the scalp in a shampoo or cream ...

Fresh Approach to Water Desalination

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The availability of fresh water is dwindling in many parts of the world, a problem that is expected to grow with populations. One promising source of potable water is the world's virtually limitless supply of seawater, but so far desalination technology has been too expensive for widespread use. Now, MIT researchers have come up with a new approach using a different kind of filtration material: sheets of graphene, a one-atom-thick form of the element carbon, which ...

Amazon Accused of Making Big Profits by Selling E-books on Terror and Violence

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Amazon, the online books giant is having to give some answers after facing flak over making big bucks selling offensive e-books on topics ranging from bomb-making to growing drugs. According to The Daily Mail, Amazon sells a vast number of e-books, which are downloaded by readers from its website, for as little as a pound. It allows anyone to upload an e-book for sale, without safeguards against content that would be refused by traditional publishers. ...

Combination of Interventions in Malaria Vector Control : Randomized Controlled Study

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The efficacy of using new strategies for malaria vector control was studied in certain insecticide- resistant areas in Africa in an attempt to reduce malaria prevalence and to bring about better management of the disease. A lot of effort and international funding is being directed towards the control and elimination of malaria. Nevertheless the disease remains an issue of major public health concern, as the efforts to control and eliminate malaria ...

Fighting Waste By Cooking Up Tasty Garbage, Spaniards

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Around 30 diners relish an open-air meal of sauteed vegetables and mixed salad, all fresh from the garbage bin on a warm summer's evening in a Madrid park. It's junk food, quite literally. To fight waste, this group of environmentalists occasionally gathers for a "junk food" dining experience, open to the whole neighbourhood. The previous evening, dragging their shopping carts, they ferreted through the waste bins of food shops on the hunt ...

New Biological Clock Application Calculates When Women may Become Infertile

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A new phone app counts down the way to infertility. Mira Kaddoura from Portland, Oregon said she created The Wonder Clock to empower other women and help them face their fears about fertility. The app requires only a woman's birth date to answer the question: 'How much time do I have left?' It then calculates the years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds until the woman can no longer bear children. "I created this ...

Mapping The Functional Genome, Going Past the Base Pairs

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Nicknamed 'the book of life,' the human genome is extremely complicated to read. But without full knowledge of its grammar and syntax, the genome's 2.9 billion base-pairs of adenine and thymine, cytosine and guanine provide limited insights into humanity's underlying genetics. In a paper published in the July 1, 2012 issue of the journal iNature/i, researchers at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine ...

Key Move In Immune System-Fuelled Inflammation, Found by La Jolla Institute Scientist

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Right in the middle of a crime scene on a television 'whodunit,' science can also gain from analysing the tracks of key players in the body's molecular site. Klaus Ley, M.D., a scientist at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy (and) Immunology, has done just that and illuminated a key step in the journey of inflammation-producing immune cells. The finding provides powerful, previously unknown information about critical biological mechanisms underlying heart disease and many other ...

Combating Drunken Driving With 'Talking' Urinal Cakes, In Michigan

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'Interactive urinal communicator,' tested by The Michigan State Police's Office of Highway Safety Planning attempts to curtail drunken driving in four Michigan counties with urinal cake that talks. The police see talking urinal cakes as an innovative way to combat drunken driving in these areas, which are prone to hard partying. Called Wizmark (pun obviously intended), the waterproof cakes are made by Healthquest Technologies in Crownsville, Md. They ...

Obligatory Breathalyzer Tests On All Vehicles In France

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Starting Sunday, it is mandatory for all vehicles moving on French roads to carry a chemical or electronic breathalyzer test, under new rules aimed at minimizing alcohol-driven accidents. "Alcohol has been the main cause of mortality on roads since 2006," according to road security authorities. About a third of fatalities on French roads is due to drink driving, a rate that far surpasses the 17 percent recorded in Britain or 10 percent in Germany. According ...

Congested Highways Up Asthma Risk: Study

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Risk of asthma higher near busy highway, reveals study. In the study, conducted by researchers at SUNY Downstate Medical Center and Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York, they found higher rates of asthma among those living closer to Interstate 278, near a portion known locally as the Gowanus Expressway, and lower rates of disease in those living in the same community but farther from the Interstate. "Our participants were randomly recruited ...

Alternative to Gene Therapy Developed

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The Scripps Research Institute researchers have identified a safe and simple method to disrupt specific genes within cells. The scientists highlighted the medical potential of the new technique by demonstrating its use as a safer alternative to an experimental gene therapy against HIV infection. "We showed that we can modify the genomes of cells without the troubles that have long been linked to traditional gene therapy techniques," said the study's senior ...

Relation Between Human Sweet Perception And Diabetes Probably Explained by Bees

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Honeybees can be employed to find out the basic links between taste perception and metabolic disorders in humans, state scientists at Arizona State University. By experimenting with honey bee genetics, researchers have identified connections between sugar sensitivity, diabetic physiology and carbohydrate metabolism. Bees and humans may partially share these connections. Gro Amdam, an associate professor, and Ying Wang, a research scientist, in the School ...

'Smart Bomb' To 'Leave Healthy Ones Alone' And Straight Away Target Cancer

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'Smart bomb' invented by scientists, boosts the potency of drugs against cancer. The tiny device, which is being developed by British scientists at the University of Edinburgh, carries minute amounts of the metal palladium encased in a harmless capsule. The "smart bomb" treatment delivers powerful poisons directly to cancer cells while leaving healthy ones alone. "Palladium is potentially very toxic but it is the most useful catalyst in any ...

Employees 'Urge To Quit' Sparked by Watching Others Get Bullied At Work

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Mere presence of being in a bullying environment is more than enough for many employees to think about quitting, suggest researchers. Canadian researchers have found that nurses not bullied directly, but who worked in an environment where workplace bullying occurred, felt a stronger urge to quit than those actually being bullied. These findings on 'ambient' bullying have significant implications for organizations, as well as contributing a new statistical ...

Averting The Immune System From Malfunctioning During Sepsis

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Severest outcome linked to pathogen infection in the bloodstream is septic shock which is a life-threatening condition invariably resulting in multiple organ dysfunctions.Currently, septic shock is one of the most frequent causes of death in intensive care units worldwide. However, it is already known that sepsis-induced multiple organ dysfunction is not a direct effect of the pathogen invasion itself but rather an overreaction of the host immune system against ...

Supreme Court Verdict Spells Victory for Obama On Health

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After the Supreme Court upheld his reforms to extend health insurance to another 32 million US citizens, President Barack Obama claimed 'Victory' for all Americans. Obama said the ruling, which prescribes how health care will be delivered in the United States for decades to come, went beyond politics as he urged a divided America to get behind a law that was in the interests of all. "Whatever the politics, today's decision was a victory for people all ...

Sprinting Helps Shed Belly Fat

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Sprinting fights belly fat, say researchers. Just 20 minutes of sprints on an exercise bike, three times a week, will do. It could replace seven hours of jogging over the week for a similar result, according to Steve Boutcher, associate professor at the University of New South Wales, who led the study. "Sprints are a very time efficient form of exercise. The sprint program, LifeSprints, reduced visceral fat with seven times ...

Abnormal Stem Cells Up Development of Myelodysplastic Syndromes

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Myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) linked to abnormal bone marrow stem cells, finds study published in the journal Blood. "Researchers have suspected that MDS is a 'stem cell disease,' and now we finally have proof," said co-senior author Amit Verma, M.B.B.S., associate professor of medicine and of developmental and molecular biology at Einstein and attending physician in oncology at Montefiore Einstein Center for Cancer Care. "Equally important, we found that even ...

Autism - What's Missing in the Genes?

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Scientists have carried out a study on variations in gene expression to understand the role of genes in individuals with autism. Autism is a heterogenous, complex, developmental condition that creates problems with communications and social interactions. Autism is a "spectrum" disorder, as different autistic individuals exhibit different symptoms. One person may display mild symptoms while in another, the symptoms may be serious. ...

Update on Prostate Cancer Screening Guidelines - The Controversy

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The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) in their update on prostate cancer screening guidelines recommended against prostate specific antigen (PSA) based screening for men who are older than 50 years of age and who do not have symptoms of prostate cancer. Prostate cancer starts in the prostate gland cells and grows slowly in most cases but sometimes it can grow and spread quickly. A man has about one in six chances of being diagnosed and one ...

Spanking Boosts Odds of Mental Illness: Study

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People who are spanked as children face higher odds of mental illness as adults, say researchers. Mental ailments include mood and anxiety disorders and problems with alcohol and drug abuse. The study, led by Canadian researchers, is the first to examine the link between psychological problems and spanking, while excluding more severe physical or sexual abuse in order to better gauge the effect of corporal punishment alone. Those who were spanked ...

Coffee Consumption may Lower Risk of Skin Cancer

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Coffee consumption linked to reduced risk of developing the most common form of skin cancer, say researchers. "Our data indicate that the more caffeinated coffee you consume, the lower your risk of developing basal cell carcinoma," said Jiali Han, Ph.D., associate professor at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston and Harvard School of Public Health. "I would not recommend increasing your coffee intake based on these ...

Rheumatoid Arthritis Takes High Toll in Unemployment, Say Researchers

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One of every 5 rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients is unable to work two years after diagnosis, say Mayo Clinic researchers. Rheumatoid arthritis patients also have a 50 percent higher risk of heart attack and twice the danger of heart failure, Mayo researchers say. Much progress has been made in recognizing the importance of early diagnosis and prompt and aggressive treatment, but gaps in understanding of the disease remain, say the authors, Mayo Clinic rheumatologists ...