Health

A simple, inexpensive method for detecting contaminants in heparin has been devised by Michigan University researchers.Heparin, a blood-thinning drug, although very effective against clots in veins, arteries and lungs, was under a cloud when contaminated samples caused serious allergic reactions resulting in many deaths.
The method relies on potentiometric polyanion sensors originally developed in Michigan University […]

Ants are not only industrious and dedicated, they are quite capable of keeping their gardens pest free, a feat still beyond human agriculturalists.And to cap it all, they have been doing it for more than 50 million years. Leaf-cutter ants put their freshly-cut leaves in gardens where they grow a special fungus that they eat.
New […]

Scientists at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have developed new nanofibers that could one day be used to heal wounds with minimal scarring and rejection by the immune system.
The strong, flexible, bio-material, is made from a common […]

Crop sprays pose a big threat to the health of people living in the countryside and must be given better protection, the High Court in Britain has ruled.The verdict, by Justice Collins is a landmark victory for Georgina Downs, who launched a one-woman campaign after crop spraying damaged her own health, reports the Telegraph.
During the […]

Couples who hug and kiss more often or become physically intimate are less likely to be stressed, especially if they are married.A week-long study of 51 double income German couples (mostly married) by Zurich University found that touchy feely pairs, who did everything from holding hands to having sex, had lower levels of stress hormone […]

Children who become very distressed by family quarrels are more likely to develop psychological problems.But little is known about what happens beyond these behavioural reactions in terms of their biological responses.
A new study by Universities of Rochester and Minnesota has found that such distressed children also have higher levels of cortisol, a stress hormone.
‘Our results […]

A bone marrow transplant from a donor cured a HIV patient, said doctors in Germany.

The result is expected to encourage further interest in gene therapy as a treatment for Aids. So far all efforts to find a cure have been unsuccessful.
The man, who suffered from leukaemia and HIV, had shown no sign of either disease […]

Thailand Thursday placed nine northern provinces under a special watch for the deadly bird flu after the disease was detected in two districts in the region recently.Health minister Paichai Varachit said the decision to activate special monitoring was made at a meeting of ministry officials early Thursday.
As winter begins in most parts of Thailand, health […]

Many newly diagnosed cancer patients, no matter what their age, have trouble absorbing all the information their doctors give them, a new study shows.The findings, which appear in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, refute the notion that patients’ ability to remember medical information is simply a matter of age.
Researchers found that among 260 newly diagnosed […]

A new study by researchers from Sweden has revealed that in women, habitual snoring may be an independent cause of excessive daytime sleepiness and daytimefatigue, regardless of sleep apnea occurrences.For the study, the researchers performed polysomnography on 400 randomly selected women, aged 20 to 70 years.
The apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) was calculated, and women who acknowledged […]