ScienceDaily: Health & Medicine News

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• Why don’t the highly educated smoke? Families kids grow up in play important role
• Intertwined evolution of human brain and brawn
• Making research findings freely available is an essential aid to medical progress, experts say
• Barriers to HIV testing in older children
• Learning early in life may help keep brain cells alive: Brain cells survive in young who master a task
• Physical activity helps maintain mobility in older adults
• Rules to cut carbon emissions also reduce air pollution harmful to people, environment
• Sperm cells are extremely efficient at swimming against a current: How sperm travel long distances, through difficult terrain, to reach an egg
• 'Virtual human' shows that stiff arteries can explain cause of high blood pressure
• An area's level of poverty or wealth may affect the distribution of cancer types
• Novel home cleaning method to reduce asthma
• Clinical trial reaffirms diet beverages play positive role in weight loss

Why don’t the highly educated smoke? Families kids grow up in play important role Posted: 27 May 2014 07:17 PM PDT It's well established that adults with college degrees are much less likely to smoke than adults with less education, but the reasons for this inequality are unclear. Families in which kids grow up and children's non-cognitive skills may matter far more than realized in explaining the robust association between education and smoking in adulthood.

Intertwined evolution of human brain and brawn Posted: 27 May 2014 03:53 PM PDT The cognitive differences between humans and our closest living cousins, chimpanzees, are staggeringly obvious; however a new study suggests that human muscle may be just as unique.

Making research findings freely available is an essential aid to medical progress, experts say Posted: 27 May 2014 03:53 PM PDT Medical researchers explore how open access publications could help moderate and reduce the vast waste of global medical research. Subscription-based academic journals make money by through copyrights assigned by authors to publishers who lock the articles behind paywalls. Open access models, in which journals charge a publication fee and then make research and related content fully and immediately available to all, stand to aid the dissemination of knowledge and to improve its quality, experts say.

Barriers to HIV testing in older children Posted: 27 May 2014 03:53 PM PDT Concerns about guardianship and privacy can discourage clinics from testing children for HIV, according to new research from Zimbabwe. The results of the study provide much-needed information on how to improve care of this vulnerable population.

Learning early in life may help keep brain cells alive: Brain cells survive in young who master a task Posted: 27 May 2014 12:47 PM PDT Using your brain -- particularly during adolescence -- may help brain cells survive and could impact how the brain functions after puberty. Scientists have found that the newborn brain cells in young rats that were successful at learning survived while the same brain cells in animals that didn't master the task died quickly.

Physical activity helps maintain mobility in older adults Posted: 27 May 2014 10:32 AM PDT It's something we've all heard for years: Exercise can help keep older adults healthy. But now a study, the first of its kind, proves that physical activity can help older adults maintain their mobility and dodge physical disability.

Rules to cut carbon emissions also reduce air pollution harmful to people, environment Posted: 27 May 2014 08:49 AM PDT Setting strong standards for climate-changing carbon emissions from power plants would provide an added bonus -- reductions in other air pollutants that can make people sick; damage forests, crops, and lakes; and harm fish and wildlife. This, according to a first-of-its-kind study released today by scientists who mapped the potential environmental and human health benefits of power plant carbon standards.

Sperm cells are extremely efficient at swimming against a current: How sperm travel long distances, through difficult terrain, to reach an egg Posted: 27 May 2014 07:13 AM PDT Like salmon traveling upstream to spawn, sperm cells are extremely efficient at swimming against the current, according to new research. The discovery may help us to understand how some sperm travel such long distances, through difficult terrain, to reach and fertilize an egg. Of the hundreds of millions of sperm cells that begin the journey up the oviducts, only a few hardy travelers will ever reach their destination. Not only do the cells have to swim in the right direction over distances that are around 1,000 times their own length, but they are exposed to different chemicals and currents along the way.

'Virtual human' shows that stiff arteries can explain cause of high blood pressure Posted: 27 May 2014 07:12 AM PDT High blood pressure is highly age-related and affects more than one billion people worldwide. But doctors can't fully explain the cause of 90 per cent of all cases. A computer model of a 'virtual human' suggests that stiff arteries alone are enough to cause high blood pressure.

An area's level of poverty or wealth may affect the distribution of cancer types Posted: 27 May 2014 07:06 AM PDT A new analysis has found that certain cancers are more concentrated in areas with high poverty, while other cancers arise more often in wealthy regions.

Novel home cleaning method to reduce asthma Posted: 27 May 2014 05:51 AM PDT Researchers received two patents for a new method to rid carpets, mattresses and other furniture of harmful allergens and pests that cause asthma. The method uses carbon dioxide to "freeze clean" home fabrics. The process deactivates proteins found in pet dander and can remove smoke residue and other allergy-causing substances.

Clinical trial reaffirms diet beverages play positive role in weight loss Posted: 27 May 2014 05:51 AM PDT A new study confirms that drinking diet beverages can help people lose weight. "This study clearly demonstrates that diet beverages can in fact help people lose weight, directly countering myths in recent years that suggest the opposite effect -- weight gain," said a study co-author.

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