science newsletter: Science News SciGuru.com

Τετάρτη 9 Απριλίου 2014

Science News SciGuru.com

Binge drinking: reduction in wound healing by impairment of the innate immune response
Atomic Force Microscope for Picoscale Measurements
Does music promote alcohol brand and consumption in teen and young adults?
New model combines multiple genomic data
In the cloud: How coughs and sneezes float farther than you think
Impact of obesity on mortality underestimated

Binge drinking: reduction in wound healing by impairment of the innate immune response

Posted: 09 Apr 2014 04:45 AM PDT

Binge drinking often results in delayed wound healing and in exacerbation of wound infections. A new study from researchers in Loyola University, Chicago shows that mimicking binge alcohol exposure in a mouse model results in impairment of innate immune responses related to wound healing. The study is published online ahead of print in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

Atomic Force Microscope for Picoscale Measurements

Posted: 09 Apr 2014 04:37 AM PDT

JILA researchers have engineered a short, flexible, reusable probe for the atomic force microscope (AFM) that enables state-of-the-art precision and stability in picoscale force measurements. Shorter, softer and more agile than standard and recently enhanced AFM probes, the JILA tips will benefit nanotechnology and studies of folding and stretching in biomolecules such as proteins and DNA.

Does music promote alcohol brand and consumption in teen and young adults?

Posted: 08 Apr 2014 06:30 PM PDT

According to a new study, alochol brand reference in popular music is strongly linked to binge drinking by teens and young adults.

Alcohol is considered the third leading lifestyle-related cause of death in the U.S. according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

New model combines multiple genomic data

Posted: 08 Apr 2014 08:30 AM PDT

The difference between merely throwing around buzzwords like “personalized medicine” and “big data” and delivering on their medical promise is in the details of developing methods for analyzing and interpreting genomic data. In a pair of new papers, Brown University epidemiologist Yen-Tsung Huang and colleagues show how integrating different kinds of genomic data could improve studies of the association between genes and disease.

In the cloud: How coughs and sneezes float farther than you think

Posted: 08 Apr 2014 08:19 AM PDT

The next time you feel a sneeze coming on, raise your elbow to cover up that multiphase turbulent buoyant cloud you’re about to expel.

That’s right: A novel study by MIT researchers shows that coughs and sneezes have associated gas clouds that keep their potentially infectious droplets aloft over much greater distances than previously realized.

Impact of obesity on mortality underestimated

Posted: 08 Apr 2014 07:38 AM PDT

The impact of overweightness and obesity on mortality may have been substantially underestimated in studies that rely on measurement of body mass index (BMI) only at the time of the study. When lifetime highest BMI is used as the criterion, the mortality risk attributable to excess weight increases. These are the major findings of a study in the journal Population Health Metrics, which suggests that risk assessment using only current BMI could be confounded by factors such as recent weight loss due to illness.