Clinical Research
Body checking in hockey, intentionally slamming an opponent against the boards, is regarded as violence under the guise of sports, according to hockey detractors, but injury numbers don't agree - at least in young players.
Findings from a new study show that 66 percent of overall injuries were caused by accidentally hitting the boards or goal posts, colliding with teammates or being hit by a puck. Only 34 percent of the injuries were caused by checking. Moreover, the accidental injuries were more severe than those from body checks.
The results appeared in June issue of the…
Women are waiting until their 30s and 40s to have children, but when they decide to do so, they are a lot more willing to engage in a variety of sexual activities to capitalize on their remaining childbearing years, according to new research by psychologists at The University of Texas at Austin. "Reproduction expediting", the researchers call it, and that includes one-night stands and adventurous bedroom behavior, they say in their July Personality and Individual Differences paper.
psychology graduate students Judith Easton, Jaime Confer and Cari Goetz, and David Buss, professor of…
Altitude training is a popular training method expected to improve the physical performance of athletes …and horses!
Recently, several national football teams spent some time at altitude on the Austrian Alps in preparation for the World Cup. Athletes from a number of endurance disciplines use altitude training as part of their yearly training program. However, scientific evidence is not clear at all as to whether altitude training is beneficial for human performance or otherwise.
A recent study I did with Peter Robbins (also University of Oxford) and others (citation below)…
Chemistry labs just don’t smell like they used to. When I were a lad, chemistry lessons involved a procedure called Qualitative Inorganic Analysis. This involved bubbling hydrogen sulfide H2S, produced in a Kipp’s apparatus, through solutions to precipitate various metals group by group.
Now hydrogen sulfide (as in rotten eggs) is known to be as toxic as hydrogen cyanide, having roughly the same lethal concentration. But these two gases are definitely not two of a kind. Even at low concentrations, hydrogen cyanide does no-one any good [1], and if Miss Marple is on…
There are two aspects to food research; an industry one, where food additives that can make food taste more or less sweet without calories have benefits, and a therapeutic one, like treating patients who over eat.
Glucagon, a hormone secreted by the pancreas, helps to regulate blood sugar levels and may also influence a person's sensitivity to sweet-tasting foods, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Blocking the tongue's ability to respond to the hormone known as glucagon decreases the taste system's sensitivity to sweetness. That…
Autism finding could lead to simple urine test for the condition
Study suggests that children with autism have a different chemical fingerprint in their urine
So says a news release from Imperial College, London, England.
The researchers examined urine samples collected by the University of Southern Australia from 3–9 year old children displaying Autism Spectrum Disorder, their unaffected siblings, and a control group from the same range, along with another control group collected by the Swiss Tropical Institute.
ASD is commonly associated with variant populations of bacteria in the gut, as…
Yap, Angley, Veselkov, Holmes, Lindon, and Nicholson (2010) have ignited a lightning storm of interest with their theoretical urine test for autism that could prevent autism, at least according to study author Nicholson, speaking to Richard Alleyne of the Telegraph:
"Professor Jeremy Nicholson, the author of the study, said: "Children with autism have very unusual gut microbes which we can test for before the full blown symptoms of the disease come through.
'If that is the case then it might become a preventable disease.'"
Yap et al. write that “Autism has been shown to have strong…
The pheromone that attracts female mice to the odor of a particular male has been identified and named ‘darcin’ by researchers writing in BMC Biology (they say they named it after Darcy from Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” - for those who have not read it, i.e., all men, he is the attractive guy who doesn't know it). This unusual protein in a male’s urine attracts females and is responsible for learned preference for specific males.
Jane Hurst led a team of researchers from the University of Liverpool to carry out the study on over 450 captive bred adult female house mice. The…
A previously unknown function that regulates how stem cells produce different types of cells in different parts of the nervous system has been discovered. The results improve our understanding of how stem cells work, crucial for our ability to use stem cells to treat and repair organs.
The stem cells’ task is to create new cells to replace those that have aged or become damaged. Previous research has shown that stem cells give rise to different types of cells in different parts of the nervous system. This process is partly regulated by the so-called Hox genes, which are active in…
Autism link with migrant parents, study finds
A study carried out at St George's Hospital, London, suggests that the incidence of Autism in children of parents who have moved to Britain from outside Europe is much higher. However, this is not found in children from the same ethnic groups whose parents were born here, which would eliminate ethnicity as a factor.
Read more about it at the link above.