Body

Thermoelectric materials can be assembled into units, which can transform the thermal difference to electrical energy or vice versa – electrical current to cooling. An effective utilization requires however that the material supplies a high voltage and has good electrical, but low thermal conductivity.

Infants born more than one week past their due dates have a higher risk of both impaired health and death, according to two new studies by authors from the University of California's San Francisco and Berkeley campuses.

The studies compared more than 2.5 million normal-weight births from healthy pregnancies of 37 to 42 weeks gestation, the range that is considered to be full-term. Findings appear in the October, 2008 issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology and also can be found online at www.ajog.org.

At dinner time, parents will often tell their child to clean their plate. However, that old maxim might lead kids to eat more than they need, especially when portions are adult-sized or supersized.

In findings to be presented at The Obesity Society's Annual Meeting on Oct. 7, children took more food when larger portions were made available to them.

Barcelona (EMBARGOED UNTIL 11:30 Central European Time: October 7, 2008)—Health experts from the Wildlife Conservation Society today released a report that lists 12 pathogens that could spread into new regions as a result of climate change, with potential impacts to both human and wildlife health and global economies. Called The Deadly Dozen: Wildlife Diseases in the Age of Climate Change, the new report provides examples of diseases that could spread as a result of changes in temperatures and precipitation levels.

PHILADELPHIA – Moderate consumption of red wine may decrease the risk of lung cancer in men, according to a report in the October issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention¸ a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

"An antioxidant component in red wine may be protective of lung cancer, particularly among smokers," said Chun Chao, Ph.D., a research scientist at Kaiser PermanenteDepartment of Research and Evaluation in Pasadena, California.

Intensive Care Unit (ICU) doctors seeking to balance the complex needs of their patients and the patients' families may make an imperfect compromise, withdrawing life support systems over a prolonged period of time. This practice is much more common than previously believed, and is also surprisingly associated with higher satisfaction with care-at least among surviving family members.

PORTLAND, Ore. – The National Institutes of Health has awarded $4 million to a group of Philippine and American scientists led by Oregon Health & Science University to aid in the discovery of new molecules and biofuels technology from marine mollusks for development in the Philippines.

An international team of researchers led by Professors Mark Caulfield and Patricia Munroe, from the William Harvey Research Institute at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry with Chris Cheeseman at the University of Alberta in Canada and Kelle Moley at the University of Washington in USA, have shown that the SLC2A9 gene, which encodes a glucose transporter, is also a high-capacity urate transporter, and thus possibly a new drug target for gout. Their findings are published in this week's PLoS Medicine (7 October 2008).

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- The first generation of a stool DNA test to identify early colorectal cancer has limitations, according to a Mayo Clinic-led study published in the Oct. 7, 2008, issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. Results did not corroborate findings of an earlier multicenter study that showed stool DNA testing was more accurate than fecal blood testing for colorectal cancer detection. *

STANFORD, Calif. — Pregnant women worried about their babies' genetic health face a tough decision: get prenatal gene testing and risk miscarriage, or skip the tests and miss the chance to learn of genetic defects before birth.

But a new prenatal test could make this dilemma obsolete. The new method, developed by scientists at Stanford University, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, requires only a maternal blood sample to spot chromosomal disorders such as Down syndrome.

An experimental anti-cancer drug can prevent -- and even reverse -- potentially fatal cardiovascular damage in a mouse model of progeria, a rare genetic disorder that causes the most dramatic form of human premature aging, National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers reported today.

A young child arrives at the emergency room after several days of abdominal pain, vomiting, and diarrhea and is sent home with a diagnosis of viral gastritis and treatment for the symptoms. The child seems better for a while, only to return to the ER with worse symptoms and a ruptured appendix, a life-threatening complication of appendicitis.

Pneumococcal (pneumonia) vaccination was associated with a 50% lower risk of heart attacks 2 years after vaccination, suggests a large hospital-based case-control study published in CMAJ. http://www.cmaj.ca/press/pg773.pdf

In a population of patients at high risk of heart attack, the study compared the rates of pneumococcal vaccine between patients having a heart attack and patients without such an event.

Community-acquired Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) infection occurred in a significant proportion of people with no recent exposure to antibiotics, with 53% having no exposure in the 45 days preceding hospitalization and 46% having no exposure in the preceding 90 days, according to a new study published in CMAJ http://www.cmaj.ca/press/pg767.pdf.

People with mild to moderate dementia are cared for largely by family physicians as well as the patient's own family, and management of care can be complex and challenging.