Body

Despite the fact that pediatricians recommend no screen media exposure for children under age 2, three-quarters of very young children in America live in homes where the television is on most of the time, according to research. A new study has found that leaving your TV set on disrupts young children while they are playing, even if the channel is tuned to adult shows. This means that simply having the TV on, even in the background, may be detrimental to children's development.

Even among low-income families, mothers with greater social and economic resources were more supportive in parenting their children than those with fewer resources, which in turn influenced the children's cognitive performance. That's the main finding of a new study that considers how economic factors and parenting quality jointly influence children's development. Conducted by researchers at the Center for Research on Culture, Development, and Education (CRCDE) in New York University, the study appears in the July/August 2008 issue of the journal Child Development.

NEW YORK, July 15, 2008 – A long-time microbial inhabitant of the human stomach may protect children from developing asthma, according to a new study among more than 7,000 subjects led by NYU Langone Medical Center researchers. Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium that has co-existed with humans for at least 50,000 years, may lead to peptic ulcers and stomach cancer. Yet, kids between the ages of 3 and 13 are nearly 59 percent less likely to have asthma if they carry the bug, the researchers report.

Expectant mothers who eat nuts or nut products like peanut butter daily during pregnancy increase their children's risk of developing asthma by more than 50 percent over women who rarely or never consume nut products during pregnancy, according to new research from the Netherlands.

"We were pretty surprised to see the adverse associations between daily versus rare nut product consumption during pregnancy and symptoms of asthma in children, because we haven't seen this in similar previous studies," said the study's lead author, Saskia M. Willers, M.Sc.

HOUSTON, TX – Scientists from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center have found overexpression of tissue type transglutaminase (TG2) in ovarian cancer is associated with increased tumor cell growth and adhesion, resistance to chemotherapy and lower overall survival rates. When researchers targeted and silenced TG2 in animal models, cancer progression was reversed, suggesting the protein may also provide a novel therapeutic approach for late-stage ovarian cancer.

Following a low-sodium diet does not appear to have any appreciable impact of asthma control as once thought, according to new research.

"Despite the clear benefit of a low-sodium diet on cardiovascular risk factors, there is no therapeutic benefit in the use of a low-sodium diet…on asthma control in our study population," wrote Zara E. K. Pogson, M.R.C.P., clinical research fellow at the University of Nottingham in England.

Angiocidin, a tumor-inhibiting novel protein discovered by Temple University researchers, may also have a role as a new therapeutic application in treating leukemia, according to a study by the researchers.

It's not always easy spotting the cuckoo in the nest. But if you don't, you pay a high price raising someone else's chick. How hosts distinguish impostor eggs from their own has long puzzled scientists. The problem remained largely unsolved while looking at it through our own eyes. It was only when people started thinking from the birds' perspective that they began to understand how hosts recognise a cuckoo egg in the nest. Marcel Honza from the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic explains that birds see UV wavelengths that are well outside our own visual range.

The expectation that East-Asian people emphasize physical symptoms of depression (e.g. headaches, poor appetite or aches/pains in the body) is widely acknowledged, yet the few available empirical studies report mixed data on this issue. A new study from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) debunks this cultural myth, and offers clinicians valuable insight to into cultural context when assessing a patient, leading to more accurate diagnosis.

CAMDEN -- For some consumers, the way a cup of mineral water tastes has more to do with the container than the contents. Especially for consumers who are less likely to enjoy touching items or products before deciding to buy them.

According to new research conducted by Maureen Morrin, an associate professor of marketing at the Rutgers School of Business—Camden, manufacturers and marketers need to consider how their product packaging feels if they want consumers to make the purchase.

Following a low-sodium diet does not appear to have any appreciable impact on asthma control, according to new research.

Contrary to past studies — which have suggested a link between low-sodium diets and improved asthma control — a new study by researchers at The University of Nottingham found no evidence that cutting back on salt helps patients with their symptoms.

Under the direction of the Helmholtz Zentrum München, a German research group studied in a longitudinal study, over six years, whether associations are identifiable between the onset of atopic diseases and exposure to air pollutants originating from traffic. The scientists based their analysis, on the one hand, on the corresponding distance of the parental home to streets busy with traffic, and on the other hand, modeled values, for the respective residencial addresses of the children, of air pollution with fine dust, diesel soot and nitrogen dioxide.

There are two completely different diseases known as diabetes. Type 1 is an autoimmune condition that often starts in childhood or adolescence. Type 2 is a metabolic disorder sometimes associated with lifestyle. In both cases, the insulin-secreting beta cells in the pancreas die, albeit at different rates.

Until now, it was thought that the processes leading to beta cell death were similar in both diseases. Scientists at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney have now shown that the causes of cell death are quite different.

Six treatments for smoking cessation perform better than placebos — including varenicline (Chantix®), recently approved for use in Canada — states a team of researchers from McGill University and the University of Montreal in an article published in CMAJ.

Indoor air quality has a greater impact on health than outdoor air quality, as North American adults spend almost 90% of their time indoors. Exposure to chemical and biological contaminants and possible cancer-causing agents is possible, and can contribute to the risk of developing respiratory and neurologic symptoms, allergies, asthma and lung cancer.