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Two new studies led by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco have found some antibiotics may be overused for children with asthma and urinary tract infections.

The findings raise concerns around breeding drug resistance in children and underscore the need for pediatricians to take a more prudent approach when prescribing antibiotic medications. In the case of asthma, the findings have led to a new trial, in which the value of targeted antibiotics is being tested.

In a first-of-its-kind study comparing human walking and running motions – and whether the hips, knees or ankles are the most important power sources for these motions – researchers at North Carolina State University show that the hips generate more of the power when people walk, but the ankles generate more of the power when humans run. Knees provide approximately one-fifth or less of walking or running power.

A new study has gone some way to answering the question about whether or not a technique called lipofilling is safe for women who are having their breasts reconstructed after surgery for breast cancer.

In Wales, the NHS is set for a real budget cut of nearly 11% over four years, while England escapes the deepest cuts across the four nations, according to John Appleby, Chief Economist at the King's Fund on bmj.com today.

In much of the discussion and debate about health care spending and reform, the "N" in NHS seems often to stand for England, writes Appleby. Yet around 10 million people in the UK do not live in England or use its health care services.

Eighteen-day periods of mandatory school closures and other social distancing measures were associated with a 29 to 37 percent reduction in influenza transmission rates in Mexico during the 2009 pandemic. The research was carried out by scientists at the Fogarty International Center at the National Institutes of Health and published in PLoS Medicine.

For more than 40 years, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has published the Red List of Threatened Species describing the conservation status of various species of animals. They are now also including plants in their lists and the picture they present is dramatic. According to recent estimates, around 20 per cent of flowering plants are currently at risk of extinction – though the exact number is unknown since such a small proportion of plant species has even been measured.

A study of tissue samples from 161 marine mammals that died between 2004 and 2009 in the Pacific Northwest reveals an association between severe illness and co-infection with two kinds of parasites normally found in land animals. One, Sarcocystis neurona, is a newcomer to the northwest coastal region of North America and is not known to infect people, while the other, Toxoplasma gondii, has been established there for some time and caused a large outbreak of disease in people in 1995.

The risk of developing heart failure was lower for postmenopausal women who frequently ate baked or broiled fish, but higher for those who ate more fried fish, in a study reported in Circulation: Heart Failure, an American Heart Association journal.

In a large-scale analysis, women who ate the most baked/broiled fish (five or more servings/week) had a 30 percent lower risk of heart failure compared to women who seldom ate it (less than one serving/month).

Boston, MA – Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) have found that among women who are mostly healthy, those diagnosed with atrial fibrillation have an increased risk of death when compared to women without atrial fibrillation. These findings are published in the May 25, 2011 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Direct injection of steroids into the middle ear for the treatment of sudden deafness was shown to be no more or less effective than oral steroids in restoring hearing levels in a large comparison study of patients. The study results appear in the May 25, 2011 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The multicenter clinical trial was funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), part of the National Institutes of Health.

Clinical trials for a new bladder cancer therapy show promising interim results. Lead researcher Alvaro Morales says that the breakthrough using the drug Urocidin follows thirty years of his research in this important area.

"I am optimistic about the results of the trial," says Dr. Morales, professor emeritus in the Department of Urology at Queen's University and director of the Queen's University Centre for Applied Urological Research. "Positive results in the next phase of trials will move us very close to a far more effective bladder cancer treatment."

WACO, Texas (May 24, 2011) — Male rappers see the "independent woman" as an educated, bill-paying person who will care for an average guy without making demands, while female rappers stress their sexual prowess and keep mum about their domestic skills, according to a Baylor University researcher's study.

But despite their very different takes on independent women, both men and women artists displayed a definite lack of the R-E-S-P-E-C-T that Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin craved in her 1967 mega-hit song.

NEW YORK (May 23, 2011) -- In a significant breakthrough, investigators at Weill Cornell Medical College and the University of California, San Francisco, have been able to overcome resistance of a form of leukemia to targeted therapy, demonstrating complete eradication of the cancer in cell and animal studies.

Contemplating mortality can be terrifying. But not everyone responds to that terror in the same way. Now, a new study which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds cultural differences in how people respond to mortality. European-Americans get worried and try to protect their sense of self, while Asian-Americans are more likely to reach out to others.

More than just a tool for predicting health, modern genetics is upending long-held assumptions about who we are. A new study by Harvard researchers casts new light on the intermingling and migration of European, Middle Eastern and African and populations since ancient times.