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Zika found in common house mosquitoes in Brazil

2016-07-22T16:45:00.001-07:00

Researchers in Brazil announced Thursday the "presence of the Zika virus" in Culex mosquitoes (the common house mosquito) in the eastern city of Recife. These findings were released with a word of caution, saying "the obtained data will require additional studies in order to assess the potential participation of Culex in the spread of Zika and its role in the epidemic."

The Weird Way Harry Potter Could Affect Your Political Views

2016-07-22T15:56:00.001-07:00

Come November, your fiction preferences might have a real-life impact on your choices at the polls. People who have read Harry Potter novels tend to have a lower opinion of Donald Trump, according to a new study-and the more books they've read in the series, the less favorably they view the Republican presidential nominee.

These findings held true regardless of a person's political party, gender, age, level of education, or religious beliefs, says study author Diana Mutz, professor of political science and communication at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication.

The massive popularity of the series, by British author J.K. Rowling, made such research possible; more than 450 million copies of the books have been sold worldwide, and Mutz found that both Republicans and Democrats were equally likely to have read them.

To gauge people's opinions of the controversial businessman-turned-politician, Mutz surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1,142 Americans. (In addition to Trump and Harry Potter, she also asked them about hot-button election issues such as waterboarding, the death penalty, and the treatment of Muslims and gay people.)

She found that each book people had read in the fantasy series lowered their evaluations of Trump by about two to three points on a 100-point sale. “This may seem small,” Mutz acknowledged in a press release, “but for someone who has read all seven books, the total impact could lower their estimation of Trump by 18 points out of 100.”

To a lesser extent, Harry Potter readership was also associated with a more positive attitude toward Muslim and gay people, and a more negative one toward questions about the use of torture and killing terrorists.

Mutz believes that the books' message of tolerance and respect for each others' differences may play a key role in influencing readers' political views.

For example, she writes, Harry Potter advocates for oppressed house-elves and opposes the evil Lord Voldemort's quest for “blood purity” among wizards. Trump, on the other hand, has called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States, and made comments about minorities, including women, Mexicans, and disabled people.

The protagonists in Rowling's books are also reluctant to use violence to settle disputes, she writes, while Trump has supported waterboarding and bombing terrorists' families.

Finally, Mutz writes, “it may simply be too difficult for Harry Potter readers to ignore the similarities between Trump and the power-hungry Voldemort.”

The study will appear in a special election edition of the journal PS: Political Science and Politics. Mutz concludes-with obvious bias of her own-that she's not sure if Harry Potter can “defeat Donald Trump” in this year's election, but that her research raises hope that the values the book preaches could prevail.

“If half-bloods, werewolves and others should be treated with respect and fairness as the Potter stories teach,” she writes, “so too should all human beings.”

This article originally appeared on RealSimple.com.

The 7 Types Of Cancer That Alcohol Might Actually 'Cause'

2016-07-22T15:50:00.001-07:00

A new analysis finds that alcohol may not only be linked to certain cancers, but we might even say it causes them.

New brain map identifies 97 previously unknown regions

2016-07-20T15:10:00.001-07:00

A new 21st Century map of the human brain contains 180 distinct areas in each hemisphere, including 97 previously undiscovered territories, research published Wednesday in the journal Nature revealed. It's not quite Google Maps, but the new optic still provides the most detailed understanding of the cerebral cortex to date, based on the freshest data from the latest technologies.

Vomiting And Diarrhea At The Republican National Convention

2016-07-19T21:11:00.001-07:00

What's the cause? No, it wasn't anything that candidate Donald Trump said. No, it wasn't any statements from the Democrats. No, LeBron James is not leaving Cleveland again.

Why is it so hard to let our kids fail?

2016-07-19T15:10:00.001-07:00

There is no question that one of the most difficult things about being a parent is letting our children stumble, fail, make mistakes.

Screen violence -- real and fictional -- harmful for kids

2016-07-18T15:10:00.003-07:00

Recent violence in the news may have a harmful impact on children, experts say.

Reefer Madness! Medical Marijuana Is Already Saving $165M Per Year For Medicare

2016-07-18T15:10:00.001-07:00

A new study shows that in states with legal medical marijuana, prescriptions for drugs that might also be treated with marijuana have fallen significantly. After just 17 states had passed legalization, Medicare was already saving $165 million per year. Nationwide legalization would save much more, not only for Medicare but for all healthcare plans. Let's hope we can finally stop wasting law enforcement resources chasing down and prosecuting people for a drug that is in many ways less harmful than alcohol.

Here's Why You Should Care That Beer Will Have Nutrition Labels

2016-07-17T15:10:00.001-07:00

The Brewers? Voluntary Disclosure Initiative will encourage brewers to list nutritional information (e.g., calories, carbohydrates, and alcohol) on its products. Even if you don't care about nutrition or beer, here's the potential impact.

Here's The Scoop About Gelato Vs Ice Cream Vs Frozen Yogurt

2016-07-16T21:10:00.001-07:00

Which one should you have: ice cream, gelato, or frozen yogurt? I know that some of you are answering "yes", but that's not a possible answer. What's the real answer?

Mike Pence Backed Obamacare's Medicaid Expansion 'Lock, Stock' And Co-Pay

2016-07-16T15:20:00.001-07:00

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Donald Trump?s vice presidential pick to run with him on the Republican Party?s ticket to reclaim the White House, backed the Affordable Care Act?s Medicaid expansion.

First Reported Case Of Female-To-Male Sexual Transmission Of Zika Probably Isn't First Case Ever

2016-07-15T21:10:00.001-07:00

New York City Health Department officials Friday reported the first documented case of a woman infecting a man with the Zika virus, suggesting that sexual transmission might be more common than previously thought.

Pfizer's Split: A Double-Edged Sword?

2016-07-15T15:11:00.001-07:00

While a split up might yield higher individual value for the segments, a consolidated drug giant will reap even higher growth if assisted with strategic acquisitions of high growth assets.

Cats, the ultimate public health weapon

2016-07-15T15:10:00.001-07:00

Chicago is trying an old fashioned solution to get rid of their rat problem. With rat problems up 67%, cats may be the answer.

7 Things to Know Before You Donate Blood

2016-07-14T21:20:00.001-07:00

The summer's no vacation for blood banks, and this one has been especially hard: Just after the fourth of July, the American Red Cross issued an emergency call for blood and platelet donations. This time of year, “blood donors are typically out of town and unable to give," explains Justin Kreuter, MD, medical director of the Mayo Clinic Blood Donor Center in Rochester, Minnesota; or they may not be eligible to donate after traveling to certain areas outside the United States. “It really hits us in the summer months,” Dr. Kreuter says. Your community needs your help now; here's what you should know about pitching in.

Eligibility is always changing, and Zika's a concern this year

The Red Cross maintains an alphabetical list of eligibility criteria for potential donors-from acupuncture (thumbs up) to Zika (thumbs down)-and can give you the latest information on whether or not you're good to give. There have been no reported cases of Zika transmission via blood transfusion so far, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but there's a strong possibility that the virus can be transmitted that way. “What we're doing now, per the FDA, is deferring [donors who may have been exposed to Zika] for 28 days, which is twice the known period of infectivity,” Dr. Kreuter says. Because Zika can be transmitted by sexual contact (via semen) as well, women with male partners who have visited Zika-affected areas are deferred for three additional months.

The FDA regulates donor blood just as aggressively as it regulates drugs

“It takes a lot of money to do the infectious-disease testing that we do [on donor blood], and when we create blood products out of the donation, that's done to the same standards as any drug manufactured in this country. The FDA holds us to those same standards, so it's a very high level of quality and also resources that are invested,” Dr. Kreuter explains. “These tests and high standards are what's keeping the blood supply safe, so that if my wife or one of my daughters needs a blood transfusion, I can feel assured that I can just sit at their bedside and hold their hand rather than worry about what that might result [in] for them later down the road.”

You'll get a mini-physical before you donate

The flip side of donor blood screening (which ensures that it's safe for the eventual recipient) is confirming the donor's health (which ensures that the blood draw won't have a negative effect on them). “We check blood pressure and pulse, we do a pinprick to check red blood cells to make sure they're safe-we don't want to make our donors iron deficient,” Dr. Kreuter says. He makes no specific suggestions about what you eat and drink prior to donation; just be sure you have breakfast and lunch under your belt, and take it easy on caffeine. “We all live on our daily espressos and whatnot, but we see donors who show up and haven't eaten [meals] and they've only been drinking coffee, and they're quite dehydrated. When you donate you're losing circulating fluid, so the water that you drink before and after your donation is important.”

You'll hardly feel a thing-seriously

The needles used to collect blood are a bit larger than those you'd encounter when, say, receiving a flu shot, but the so-called 'small pinch' you feel at insertion is, truly, no big deal. “What we feel [at the start of a blood draw] is just on the surface of our skin. These needles have silicone on them, they're made to glide and be quite comfortable. After that initial stick, you're not going to feel anything,” Dr. Kreuter says. If needles give you the shivers, look away for the quarter-second in which yours is placed; then ask a staffer to cover up the insertion site for you. Since the "tough" part is already over, you can lie back and spend the next eight to 10 minutes zoning out.

It's okay to have a cookie after you donate

“What's healthy is to keep a balanced diet as you go forward in the day [after your donation],” Dr. Kreuter says. “We tend to stock our canteen area with things like water and juice and then salty snacks, because salt helps you retain a little more of the [water] volume that you've lost through donation. The cookies are there because [they're] something the donor culture has grown up in-maybe not the healthiest option, but certainly an expectation. Believe it or not, I have meetings about cookies. I've seen shirts before that say 'I donate for the cookies.'” Bottom line: Rewarding yourself with a treat isn't going to do any harm, provided that you indulge in moderation.

Your blood could save patients who haven't even entered the world yet

Though many of us are reminded of the importance of blood donation when tragedies happen, much of what we give does the quiet work of saving people who'll never show up on the news. Since the need for blood doesn't go away, the best way to save lives is to contribute regularly. “At Mayo, about 15% to 20% of our blood is going to trauma patients and being used in our ER; a lot of our blood gets used supporting patients through life-saving cardiac or cancer surgeries. Cancer patients [also need blood]-chemotherapy knocks down their ability to make their own red blood cells and platelets-and folks who have medical conditions like autoimmune diseases also need transfusions.”

Donations flow to delivery rooms, too: “If anemia is significant enough in utero we transfuse during pregnancy and sometimes immediately after delivery,” Dr. Kreuter explains. “A lot of kids need blood in the first couple of minutes of life. Sometimes with newborn babies an emergency platelet transfusion in the first few moments of life is absolutely necessary; in their situation the newborn brain is so delicate and fragile that having these platelets immediately available is the name of the game in order to prevent bleeding into their brains, which results in long-term disabilities.”

Note that platelets have a shelf life of just five days, while whole blood can be stored for up to six weeks. The immediate need for platelets-and platelet donors-is constant.

Donating your voice is vital, too

Those "Be nice to me, I gave blood today!" stickers aren't merely a cute (and justified) humblebrag: They're also a benevolent form of peer pressure, not unlike the "I voted" stickers we earn and wear on election days. “Hearing about blood donation from a friend or colleague is very motivating in getting [potential first-timers] to think about taking that next step,” Dr. Kreuter says. “Our donor population [in Rochester] has an older average age, and we're trying to reach out to the younger generation to start having the same blood donation habits.”

Think about it this way: Taking your kids to see you strengthen your community's heartbeat at a blood center is just as important as bringing them with you to the voting booth. Donate visibly, donate vocally, and donate as often as you can.

The Platform of Things: The Mega IoT Platforms Land Grab

2016-07-14T15:11:00.001-07:00

Every time I meet with a client these days, be it in the Automotive , Manufacturing, Pharma, Aerospace, IT or any other industry, even industries you would not expect from like farming, the discussion sooner or later ends up on IoT platforms. It seems every product and service is becoming a platform. As a result, every industry is moving from offering products and owning assets to offering services and managing interactions. Platforms will underpin this shift with IoT fueling the revolution.

Aging, Not Obamacare To Fuel Next Decade's Medical Spending

2016-07-13T21:10:00.001-07:00

The 5.8% growth in health spending “is expected to be influenced by changes in economic growth, faster growth in medical prices, and population aging,” from 2015 to 2015, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

African-American leaders call on CDC to break silence on gun violence

2016-07-13T15:16:00.001-07:00

African-American public health leaders are calling on the CDC to break their silence on gun violence and recognize it as a public health crisis.

teeth whitening dentist fox chapel pa

2016-07-13T01:00:00.001-07:00

Get these because your competition don't. Better video better results.

Juno Therapeutics Re-Starts Cancer Trial After Deaths Put Study on Hold

2016-07-12T21:15:00.003-07:00

Juno Therapeutics has been given the green light to re-start a cancer clinical trial less than a week after regulators put it on hold because of three patient deaths.

Scott and Mark Kelly get personal about spaceflight

2016-07-12T21:15:00.001-07:00

Although they never flew in space together, twins and retired astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly both understand why the other one misses viewing Earth as a big round ball in space from the window of a shuttle or the cupola of the International Space Station.

In a Scientific First, Blind Mice Regain Eyesight

2016-07-12T16:35:00.001-07:00

Once the optic nerve that's responsible for sight is damaged, it's impossible to see again. At least that's been the dogma. But a group of U.S. scientists has upended that thinking and helped mice with destroyed optic nerves to see again. It does not have immediate implications for humans yet, but it points researchers in promising new directions.

Andrew Huberman, an associate professor of neurobiology at Stanford University, and his team describe their advance in a study published in Nature Neuroscience. To learn about the way vision nerves grow, they crushed the optic nerve in one eye of mice. Once destroyed, the long finger-like extensions sent out by nerve cells from the eye to the brain start to shrivel, eventually severing any connection to the brain and resulting in blindness. Huberman and his colleagues, however, found that a combination of visual stimulation of the nerve, along with nerve-growing chemicals, can rescue these extensions, called axons, and coax them to stretch out again. Not only that, but the axons are able to find their appropriate connections to the correct sight-dedicated parts of the brain to restore vision. Mice with similar damage to the nerve that didn't receive the treatment did not show much regrowth of the axons.

About three weeks after the optic nerves in the mice were damaged, the researchers saw evidence of axons extending back into the brain from the eye, something that previous efforts to regenerate eye nerves haven't done with much reliability. The combination of keeping the damaged but remaining axons stimulated, by exposing the mice to bars on a screen that are moving in different directions, and the nerve growth factors lead to a 500-fold increase in axon regrowth. Granted, not all of the axons managed to sprout again, but those that did were able to do so with impressive speed and distance to reach the brain.

When the researchers conducted four different tests to verify how much of the regrowth contributed to actual restoration of vision in the animals, the animals passed two of the tests that detected large objects and movement.

“For the longest time people in the field wondered if neurons could regenerate and form the correct patterns to connect to the brain, and we found that they did,” says Huberman.

The most compelling finding is that the study suggest that once nerves are coaxed to grow again, they retain the instructions to find their proper connections in the brain's visual center. If nerves growing toward the brain are like visitors to New York's Grand Central Station, these nerves are like well-equipped travelers with maps and specific instructions for finding their destination. “It means that neurons remember the way home; they never forget,” says Huberman.

That's encouraging him and his team to start considering how to translate the results to treat blindness in people. Keeping the axons stimulated by exposing them to stimuli is an easy first step; if these axons are kept alive, then they have a chance of regrowing again, as the mouse study showed. And now that it's possible to push those axons to grow long enough to reach the brain, there is hope that some people with diseases like glaucoma, for example, might be able to retain their vision if they keep their compromised axons stimulated enough, and then eventually treat them with nerve growth factors.

That may be a few years away yet for people, but, Huberman is hopeful. “I want to see something positive in humans within five years,” he says.

This article originally appeared on Time.com.

How Artificial Sweeteners May Mess With Your Brain

2016-07-12T15:16:00.001-07:00

Fake sweeteners aren't the weight loss boon they were supposed to be. They may actually be the opposite.

How dogs sniff out diabetes on your breath

2016-07-11T15:11:00.001-07:00

For years, dogs have been trained to alert people with diabetes when sugar levels are low, and now, scientists are revealing what scents they are picking up on.

This Startup Is Leading A Digital Health Revolution, Cutting Premiums And Improving Results

2016-07-10T21:15:00.001-07:00

Witnessing the rapid advancements in modern medicine, paired with the emergence of wearable technology, mobile apps to monitor personal health and the rise of digital programs to replace traditional health plans -- healthcare remains one of the most progressive industries in the global economy.
Over $2.9 trillion is spent on healthcare annually, with 75% of this spending directly tied to chronic illnesses resulting from preventable behaviors and lifestyle choices. While the volume of workplace wellness programs continues growing exponentially, the success rates have declined, despite a staggering 80% increase in health insurance premiums. This decline in sufficiency is, in part, the consequence of measuring the effectiveness of wellness programs by engagement, not active participation and proven results over time. In an effort reverse the trend, billions of dollars are invested each year into extensive research aimed at creating new products, solutions, programs and health plans to better identify and treat various forms of health-related illness.