Afrogalaxy

Last year, the FDA recognized a new drug for epilepsy made from marijuana’s own CBD, otherwise known as cannabidiol. That means the marijuana plant may have a confirmed medical use after all.

So what about medical marijuana and diabetes? Can diabetics use the drug to help their condition or safely use it for pleasure?

As more states legalize medical marijuana, people with all kinds of diseases are wondering this same question.

However, diabetics are left reading between the lines of existing studies to make a conclusion. The short answer: experts don’t know for sure.

People with diabetes can discuss how to safely use medical marijuana with their doctors. However, the research is slim and sometimes opposing on whether the drug actually helps diabetes.

One large study published in The American Journal of Medicine points to positive benefits for diabetes.

The study was conducted on over 4,600 participants using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) survey. Of those participating, about 580 used marijuana regularly and over 1,900 had used it in the past. Interestingly, researchers found that using marijuana was associated with a lower fasting insulin level and a smaller waist size.

A review published in the Natural Medicine Journal also highlighted positive outcomes. The review cited the NHANES study as well as several mice models that suggest cannabis protected mice from getting diabetes or reduced its severity.

The review also pointed out a study in Israel that revealed a low dose of THC, well below its psychoactive capabilities, could protect the body against organ damage.

But there are studies showing negative effects too. One such study published by the American Diabetes Association showed that marijuana users tended to consume about 20 percent more food, eat a lesser quality diet involving simple carbs, have higher blood pressure and have a higher percentage of visceral fat.

All of these markers could exacerbate diabetes risk. To balance these findings, though, the same study did find that marijuana users had lower overall fat content and a lower BMI.

Other possible (largely unproven) benefits of medical marijuana that many cannabis advocates commonly highlight:

? Reducing anxiety

? Reducing pain and inflammation

? Slowing cancer growth

? Muscle relaxant, which could be helpful for multiple sclerosis

? Controlling side effects of chemotherapy, such as nausea and vomiting

Officially, the National Institute on Drug Abuse states that not enough large-scale studies have been conducted to provide definitive answers about medical marijuana. One thing is certain, though: In light of the new wave of cannabis interest, this is a field of study researchers cannot overlook.

The difficult task is to conduct such research under available laws, which prohibit the use and study of marijuana by the federal government. Researchers will need to take care to go the proper pathways so that more research can become available and recognized.
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Shorter patients in hospital intensive care units, or ICUs, are more likely to die during treatment than taller ones, a new study suggests.

Among more than 400,000 critically ill adults, the shortest patients (4 feet, 6 inches) were 29 percent (men) and 24 percent (women) more likely to die in the hospital than the tallest -- 6 feet, 6 inches, the study found.

Among the tallest, the risk of dying in the hospital ranged from 21 percent for men and 17 percent for women.

The study does not prove height was totally responsible for the increase in deaths, only that the two appear to be linked.

The study was launched because ICUs tend to base treatment on an ideal patient of average weight and height, said lead researcher Dr. Hannah Wunsch, a critical care doctor at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto.

"There are often devices and tubes that are put into people that come in one size or can't easily be varied to accommodate different size individuals," she said.

Wunsch's team thought that these constraints might affect patient care.

"Sure enough, we found that even after we accounted for other factors that we know account for someone dying in the hospital, there was a pretty strong relationship between the height of an individual and their mortality," Wunsch said.

"We can't say for sure why this is happening," she said. "It's speculative that all the things we do to people might in some way be harmful to patients who are smaller."

For doctors, Wunsch said both height and weight may be worth taking into account when treating patients.

"There is limited ability to change things right now," she said. "It opens up a new avenue for awareness and future research."

For the study, Wunsch and her colleagues collected data on patients in 210 ICUs in the United Kingdom between 2009 and 2015. The data included about 233,000 men and 184,000 women.

Of those patients, 45 percent had their height measured.

Increases in height were linked to decreases in deaths, the study found. Researchers also found that height predicted leaving the hospital for home.

Though differences in treatment might account for the findings, no difference in deaths was seen among patients on mechanical ventilators. These breathing devices must be adjusted to a patient's height.

The researchers couldn't determine if height was influenced by childhood disease, such as cancer, which can affect life expectancy. Nor could they account for differences in care in individual ICUs that might affect outcomes.

Dr. Mark Astiz, chairman of critical care medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, said these findings aren't conclusive enough to change clinical practice.

"The results of this study need to be confirmed," said Astiz, who wasn't involved with the research. "Also, investigation into the patient characteristics that may be contributing to these differences needs to be done."

The report was published Dec. 23 in the journal Intensive Care Medicine.

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Two new studies suggest that when people under 40 develop high blood pressure, their risk of early heart disease and stroke go up significantly.

The first study found that in a group of about 5,000 young American adults, having high blood pressure was linked to as much as a 3.5 times higher risk of heart disease and stroke.

The second study looked at nearly 2.5 million young adults from Korea, and also found that high blood pressure in young people increased their risk of premature heart disease and stroke by up to 85 percent.

Both studies relied on the new blood pressure guidelines from the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association. These guidelines set a lower threshold for what's considered high blood pressure. Stage 1 high blood pressure begins when blood pressure is above 130/80 mm Hg, and is considered stage 2 high blood pressure if it rises above 140/90 mm Hg.

There's been some debate about whether these new guidelines are too strict, and they haven't been universally adopted. For example, they aren't yet being used in Europe.

However, the lead author of the first study, Dr. Yuichiro Yano from Duke University, said their findings show that "the new blood pressure guidelines may help identify young adults at higher risk of cardiovascular events and all-cause mortality. The new blood pressure guidelines seem reasonable."

According to the new guidelines, a normal blood pressure should be less than 120 (systolic)/less than 80 (diastolic).

Editorial co-author Dr. Gregory Curfman, who is deputy editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, said the findings from the two studies with two very different populations are "really pretty strong evidence" that the new guidelines are identifying worrisome high blood pressure in adults under 40.

What's surprising under the new guidelines is just how many people have high blood pressure when the lower threshold is used. In the United States, the new guidelines mean that 46 percent of Americans have high blood pressure, up from 32 percent. In China, the number is now 50 percent, up from 25 percent. And in India, it's now 43 percent where it used to be 29 percent, according to the editorial.

One reason these rates may be so high is that high blood pressure often doesn't have symptoms.

Curfman's co-author, Dr. Naomi Fisher from Harvard Medical School, said, "For many patients, high blood pressure is an abstract disease. Unlike a broken bone or headache, hypertension is almost impossible to visualize or localize. Add that it rarely causes symptoms, and that its damage -- like heart attack or stroke -- often takes years to occur, and it's easy to understand why the public may underestimate the importance of controlling high blood pressure."

But Fisher said people can do a lot to control blood pressure.

"We need to engage our patients and help them understand the power they have to control their health," she said.

One step is regularly monitoring blood pressure at home. People with high blood pressure also need to "prioritize healthy lifestyle changes. Even with medication, healthy living is imperative to control hypertension. This means a healthy diet and a healthy weight, restricted sodium [salt] and alcohol intake, and regular exercise," Fisher said.

"This work is hard," she added, "but it pays off."

Yano noted that if young people with high blood pressure can bring it down, the risk of heart disease and stroke might also come down.

The people in Yano's study were an average age of 36 when the study began. The study group was almost evenly divided between white and black people. About 230 people had a heart attack, stroke or heart failure during the nearly 19-year follow-up period.

People with elevated blood pressure (120-129/less than 80 mm Hg) had a 67 percent higher risk of heart disease or stroke. Those with stage 1 high blood pressure (130/80 and higher) had a 75 percent higher risk, and those with stage 2 high blood pressure (140/90 and higher) had a 3.5 times higher risk of heart disease or stroke compared to someone with normal blood pressure, the study found.

In the Korean study, the average age was 31 years old. Nearly 45,000 cardiovascular events (heart disease or stroke) were reported during the study's average 10-year follow-up. Young adults with stage 1 high blood pressure had about a 25 percent higher risk of heart disease or stroke compared to those with normal readings. For those with stage 2 high blood pressure, the risk of heart disease or stroke was 76 percent higher in men and 85 percent higher in women.
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PARIS: International efforts to save some of the world's rarest and economically important plants from climate change are doomed to fail because their seeds cannot be stored, researchers warned on Friday (Nov 2).

As the planet heats and mankind continues to decimate natural habitats, scientists concede that the only way to save some types of vegetation is in seed banks - giant repositories of thousands of species preserved for future generations.

Nations agreed a global strategy in 2002 to conserve at least three quarters of threatened plant species with the aim of recovering and restoring their stocks in nature at some point.

Scientists working in several seed banks around the world currently conserve seeds by drying them before freezing.

But new research by botanists at Britain's Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, found that 36 per cent of "critically endangered" plants and trees aren't bankable under the current method because their seeds die when dried and so cannot be preserved by freezing.

"You can't dry the seeds so you cannot conserve them in a conventional seed bank," John Dickie, head of collections at Kew, told AFP.

It was previously known that at least eight percent of plants -- including oak trees, mango, avocado and cacao - produce "recalcitrant" seeds that die when dried.

But with seed banking a work in progress, only a small proportion of plants have had their suitability for freezing assessed.

Dickie and his team developed a model using data on the climate, species habitat and the known seed-storage behaviour of related vegetation that predicted how likely it was that a plant's seeds would be bankable.

PRESERVATION GOALS "IMPOSSIBLE"

The analysis showed that the goal of conserving 75 per cent of the world's threatened plant species outside their natural habitat by 2020 was "practically impossible".

In addition, even a proportion of seeds that survive drying and freezing have been shown to deteriorate while in storage, further complicating efforts to save their species.

Dickie said the team at Kew, which has been banking seeds for nearly 40 years, noticed "declines in viability" in some seed varieties over the decades, meaning they are less likely to be successfully planted and grown in future.

Other common food plants with problematic seeds include lychees, jack fruit and coconuts - all from the tropics. Ebony, parana pine and myrtle trees also have "recalcitrant" seeds.

"It's looking very crudely like some sort of 80-20 rule: 80 per cent of what we've got seems to be doing perfectly well but maybe 20 per cent is living shorter under conventional conditions," he said.

One potential way of saving plants with hard-to-store seeds is, somewhat counter-intuitively, to freeze them at a much lower temperature using liquid nitrogen.

This avoids the drying stage and, according to the team behind the study published in Nature Plants, can preserve seeds better than the current method.

Dickie said it was vital that seeds were stored quickly after collection to boost their chances of survival.

He said there was a need for greater research on identifying at-risk species - often grown in remote, tropical areas.

"Once you know where the population of plants is you can get in there and then it's really a matter of getting them to a facility fast," he said.

"As successful as seed banking is for some species, it is not suitable for all seed plants and we need to invest in other ways to safeguard these."
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A Sex Therapist and Consultant Psychiatrist, Dr Tomi Imarah, says not having sex regularly, being part of a balanced diet, can make one to lose job.

Imarah, who runs an online Mental Health Counselling Service, called “Dr Tomi’s Haven’’, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria on Thursday in Lagos.

According to her, sex is part of a balanced diet, reflecting how essential it is to overall health and well being.

“With regards to the impact of sex on job performance, I will prefer an emphasis on sex in marriage; frequent unmet expectations stir frustrations and resentment, leaving you distracted at a subconscious level.

“Sex boosts endorphins and other productivity hormones; you go to work energised, work brilliantly and get promoted.

“The reverse is sexual frustration, and pent up emotions is highly distracting and you are prone to errors.

“From my interactions with male clients when they have a vibrant sex life, they feel energised to achieve so much in other areas of their lives.

“What they do not know is that sex releases endorphins, which are ‘feel good’ hormones.

“These hormones fill you with energy, just like when you go for a run or other rigorous exercises. It pumps blood to your brain and helps you operate more optimally.

“Not to talk of the fact that couples with frustrations in the bedroom have it spilling into other areas of their relationships, causing conflicts, leading to further repercussions outside the home including workplace,“ she said.

Imarah said that during sexual activities, certain hormones including oxytocin, endorphins, dopamine, testosterone, estrogen were released.

“These sex hormones leave behind some effects, such as improved mood, stress alleviation, immune boosting, relaxed feeling, positive energy, improved attention and concentration, and improved memory capacity.

“All these effects culminate in improved emotional, mental, and physical well being; that is why people walk around with a spring in their steps.

“Apart from these biochemical effects of sex, stoking the intimacy flames with someone you love helps your relationship thrive better, “ the therapist said.

Imarah said that many Nigerians’ attitude toward and perception about sex was very poor and attributed this to ignorance and poor education at all levels.

She said that only men were allowed to talk and engage in sexual activities, while sex for women was shrouded in secrecy.

“So, you now have a whole generation of women: wonderful mothers, devoted wives, great cooks, hardworking in every area of life, but struggling in the bedroom.

“To start changing this situation, sex education needs to be taken more seriously at all levels; right from home, parents need to have “The Sex Talk” with their adolescents, both boys and girls.

“Formal sex education needs to be included in school curriculum and delivered by specially trained sex educators.

“That we do not talk about sex does not mean our boys and girls are not experimenting, especially with the current information explosion on the internet.

“The least we can do is ensure we provide early foundation knowledge and put things in the right perspective.

“Also, there should not be stigmatisation of women who are sex enthusiasts; women should be free to express themselves as well as men.

“We should let go of the cultural nuances that feed the impression that women’s interest in sex reflects promiscuity,” the sex therapist added.
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Fentanyl, a powerful and dangerous synthetic opioid, is now showing up in crack cocaine and causing life-threatening overdoses.

Within a recent four-day period, a Philadelphia hospital treated 18 patients for an apparent opioid overdose even though they'd only been smoking crack cocaine, researchers report.

"None of them had intended to use opioids or fentanyl, but their drug testing as well as their clinical presentation argued they had been exposed to pretty high doses of fentanyl," said study lead author Dr. Utsha Khatri. She's an emergency medicine resident with the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

Three of the patients died from their overdose, Khatri and her colleagues reported in the Nov. 1 New England Journal of Medicine.

Fentanyl has been increasingly found in drugs seized by law enforcement, said Emily Feinstein, executive vice president of the Center on Addiction, in New York City.

These illegal drugs include heroin and cocaine, as well as methamphetamine, ketamine and counterfeit prescription pills, Feinstein said.

Fentanyl is 50 to 100 times more potent than heroin, and an amount equivalent to the size of a grain of rice can kill you, she said.

"Fentanyl is so cheap, and the drug cartels have great access to it. It is a tremendously effective filler because it's highly addicting. If it doesn't kill them, people get an intense reaction that creates addiction," Feinstein explained. "It's cheap, it has a strong high and it makes people come back for more."

Between 2012 and 2016 there's been a 23-fold increase in the number of deaths involving cocaine in combination with synthetic opioids, according to the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse. That amounted to 4,184 deaths in 2016.

"We're really in a fentanyl epidemic right now," Feinstein said. "Overdose death rates are really driven by fentanyl."

At Khatri's hospital, the 18 patients all came in with textbook signs of opioid poisoning -- lethargy, pinpoint pupils and dangerous slowing of their respiration.

Doctors administered the OD drug naloxone to 17 patients, who required higher doses than are usually needed to reverse an opioid overdose.

Urine tests drawn from 16 of the patients showed they had used cocaine, and 15 patients also had confirmed fentanyl exposure in concentrations consistent with severe poisoning, the study authors said.

Khatri recommended that hospital emergency departments keep rapid-testing strips for fentanyl on hand, so doctors can respond quickly to unintentional fentanyl overdoses.

Fentanyl has been making its way into both crack and powder cocaine, Feinstein said.

The New York City Department of Health has launched a campaign aimed at protecting young adults who party in bars and occasionally use cocaine, Feinstein said.

Bartenders are being trained to administer naloxone, and signs are being hung in bathrooms warning people not to use cocaine by themselves, she said.

"This is an opioid-naive population that is recreationally using cocaine and not realizing how prevalent fentanyl is," Feinstein said.

Feinstein emphasized how quickly fentanyl can kill.

"If you experience an overdose, the time to death is much shorter than heroin. You're talking minutes, instead of hours," she stated. "You have a much shorter window in which your life can be saved."
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The world's oceans may be heating up at a faster pace than previously thought, leaving the planet less time to avoid catastrophic global warming, according to a study published Wednesday.

The study published in the journal Nature by scientists at Princeton University, University of California San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography and other research centers found that the earth's oceans have retained 60 percent more heat each year over the past quarter century than previously determined by scientists.

"We thought that we got away with not a lot of warming in both the ocean and the atmosphere for the amount of [carbon dioxide] that we emitted," one of the report's authors, Princeton geoscientist Laure Resplandy. told The Washington Post. "But we were wrong. The planet warmed more than we thought. It was hidden from us just because we didn't sample it right. But it was there. It was in the ocean already."

The study found that current means of acquiring data on ocean temperatures, which rely on floating robotic devices that transmit readings to satellites, known as the Argo array, have gaps in coverage as some parts of the ocean have too many floats while some have too few.

"It's not that easy to reliably estimate the whole ocean heat from spot measurements," Ralph Keeling, climate scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and co-author of the report, told the San Diego Union-Tribune. "You have to model what's happening in the gaps."

Resplandy and Keeling instead collected data by measuring the volume of gases, particularly oxygen and carbon dioxide, that have escaped the ocean as it heats up and entered the atmosphere over the past few decades.

"When the ocean warms, it loses some gas to the atmosphere," said Resplandy. "That's an analogy that I make all the time: If you leave your Coke in the sun, it will lose the gas."

This method provided scientists a reliable indicator of ocean temperature change and resulted in reporting a higher number for how much warmings oceans have experienced.

A report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change earlier this month called for "rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes" to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius instead of 2 degrees, in order to offer the best chance of protecting people, property and natural ecosystems -- and "ensuring a more sustainable and equitable society."

The IPCC report called for climate emissions to be cut by 20 percent by 2030 and then eliminated by 2075 to achieve that goal.

Wednesday's study found emissions levels would need to be 25 percent lower than the IPCC's guidelines, as rising ocean temperatures will continue to drive warming for several more decades even if the world immediately and drastically reduces greenhouse gases.

"The ocean warmed more than we thought, and that has serious implications for future policy," Resplandy said. "This is definitely something that should and will be taken into account in the next report."
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Newborns of fathers 45 and older are more likely to be underweight or wind up in intensive care, researchers reported Thursday (Nov 1), adding to the list of problems associated with older dads.

For fathers 55 and up, infants tended to score worse in a standardised test used to assess the baby's health immediately after birth.

Even more startling - and harder to explain - was a heightened risk for women carrying the child of a man 55 and older of diabetes arising during pregnancy, according to a study published in the medical journal BMJ.

All these conclusions, the researchers cautioned, are based on an analysis of medical records rather than a controlled experiment, which means no firm conclusions about cause-and-effect can be drawn.

The overall risk of such outcomes also remained low, they added.

But the findings held true even after other factors that might skew the results - age of the mother, maternal smoking, level of education - were taken into account, they said.

"A significant number of these negative birth outcomes were estimated to be prevented if older fathers had elected to have children before the age of 45," the scientists concluded.

"The risk associated with advanced paternal age should be included in discussions regarding family planning and reproductive counselling."

The average age of fatherhood has been steadily rising in wealthy nations, as has the percentage of fathers above 45 or 55.

In the United States, the number of births to men 40 and older has almost doubled to 9 per cent over the last 40 years. For men over 50, the percentage has gone up from 0.5 to nearly one.

20 GRAMMES LIGHTER

Similar trends are found in western Europe. In England, for example, fathers over 35 accounted for 40 per cent of all births in 2003, compared with 25 per cent in 1993.

To date, most research on the link between the age of parents and health outcomes in children has focused on older mothers.

But recent studies suggest that being a father later in life may also be associated with higher risks in offspring of autism, genetic abnormalities and mental problems.

One possible culprit is thought to be changes with age in male reproductive cells that affects the way genes are expressed, rather than the genes themselves.

To better understand the possible impact of advanced-age fatherhood on infants and mothers, researchers led by Michael Eisenberg of Stanford University combed through data on more than 40.5 million births in the United States from 2007 to 2016.

Children born of fathers 45 or older were on average 20g lighter, and had a 14 per cent higher risk of low birth weight - less than 2.5kg - than infants born to younger dads.

These children were also 14 per cent more likely to be admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit, and had 18 per cent higher odds of experiencing a seizure compared with infants of fathers aged 25 to 34.

The risk of gestational diabetes, meanwhile, for women carrying the child of a man aged 55 or older increased by 34 percent.

The researchers further estimate that 13 per cent of premature births were attributable to fathers of more advanced age.

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The trade war between the United States and China has caused other companies to consider moving their operations out of both countries, new research showed Monday.

The research, conducted by the American Chamber of Commerce in South China, said 72 percent of 219 firms questioned said they were considering moving out of China -- while 77 percent said they were thinking about moving out of the United States.

Almost 50 percent of the companies are located in the United States, one-third are in mainland China and the rest are in other nations. The survey said about 95 percent of the companies have operations in China.

"It's reasonable and practical for them to relocate factories to other countries which will have stable and normal trading relations in the near future," Zhou Hao, a senior economist at Commerzbank in Singapore, told the South China Morning Post.

"What worries me the most is not so much the immediate impact, but the potential long-term loss of access by Chinese companies to the U.S. market and, as a result, American companies' access to a market that will eventually have five times as many consumers as the U.S.," chamber President Harley Seyedin said in a statement.

"The study, representing the factual points of view of participating companies from countries spanning the globe, will cause the leaders from both sides of the equation to pause and rethink their strategies."

The chamber said the study was done from Sept. 21 through Oct. 10, after the Trump administration levied an additional $200 billion in tariffs on Chinese products. That penalty followed Beijing imposing $60 billion in tariffs on U.S. imports.
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The retro Harvest Moon-like farming simulator can be yours for $7.99.
by Tom McNamara

(Credit: Screenshot: Tom McNamara/Download.com)

In the movie business, there's a concept known as "counter-programming," where you release one type of film at the same time as another, to give people more options for what to see that weekend. The typical example is releasing a romantic comedy at the same time as a blockbuster action flick. Doing this lets you capture an audience that would otherwise go unserved.

Today, only days before Red Dead Redemption 2 is set to sweep through wallets across the globe, the award-winning retro farming RPG-sim Stardew Valley has come out for iOS. Speaking of wallets, Stardew has another mark in its favor: a price tag of just $7.99, compared to $59.99 and up for Rockstar Game's epic western.

Plus, Stardew has no in-app purchases, unlike most mobile games. You get the whole game all at once, in a version that you can play on the bus or in a car. However, note that the iOS version doesn't currently have multiplayer.

Of course, as an RPG-sim, you start out with the usual humble origins. The farm you unexpectedly inherit from your grandfather is initially modest and needs a bit of cleanup and repair before you can start growing crops, raising livestock, and earning cash.

However, you can choose to start from one of several different locations on the map, and each spot is geared toward certain play styles. If you like fishing, spelunking mines, or foraging, there's a location that will be suited to your tastes. There's a wide variety of activities to participate in, many of them seasonal.

The developer Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone says that you can get over 50 hours of gameplay from Stardew Valley. There's crafting, questing, exploration, character and farm personalization, and a village full of characters to interact with, a dozen of which you could marry and settle down with (not all at once, that is).

Barone created the game as a way to fill the gap he felt had been left by Harvest Moon for many years, but he also drew inspiration from Animal Crossing, Minecraft, and Terraria. He was the only developer on the game, writing all of its code and creating all of its artwork, a project that ended up taking about four years before it was release for Windows in February 2016.

When he began the project, he was an usher at a movie theater, and now his game is on eight different platforms, with an upcoming Android release making it nine. You can now purchase the product of his blood, sweat and tears for the cost of a deli sandwich.
Takeaways

The popular retro farming sim Stardew Valley has come to iOS, with a price tag of $7.99. It's inspired by Harvest Moon, Animal Crossing, Minecraft, and Terraria.
An Android release is also planned, but no release date has been set.
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The Girl Scouts may want to add a Gamer merit badge to their STEM program. A new study from the University of Surrey in the U.K. found that girls between the ages of 13-14 who identified as “heavy gamers”—that is, clocking in over nine hours of playing time a week—were three times more likely to pursue a STEM degree compared to girls who were non-gamers.

The study, published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, also found that 100% of the girls who were already in STEM programs identified as gamers.

The same cannot be said of boys studying in the STEM fields. While girls seemed to relate their interest in STEM to being gamers, boys identified themselves as gamers or not regardless of what field they were studying, leading the researchers to suspect that boys still experience far less pressure to conform to the gamer stereotype if they were studying a STEM degree.

Researcher Anesa Hosein, who led the study, thinks this correlation can help identify young women who may be interested in STEM early and get them on track to a career in the sciences.

“Our research shows that those who study PSTEM [physical science, technology, engineering, and math] subjects at degree level are more likely to be gamers, so we need to encourage the girl gamers of today to become the engineering and physics students and pioneers of tomorrow,” she said in a statement. “It therefore makes sense, in the short term, that educators seeking to encourage more take up of PSTEM subjects should target girl gamers, as they already may have a natural interest in these subjects.”
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"Even though we've seen some tangible success, there are still people dying, and a public health challenge remains going forward," researcher Jason West said

  Over the course of two decades, from 1990 to 2000, the number of deaths attributed to air pollution has been cut in half.

The new study, published Friday in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, is only the latest to show pollution protections have had a positive impact on humans and environmental health.

Researchers at the University of North Carolina developed a model capable of estimating the number of deaths caused by air pollution each year. The statistical model relies on previous research into the health effects of air pollution. The model is populated using measurements of PM2.5 and ozone.

Particulate matter measuring less than 2.5 microns across can be inhaled deep into the lungs. The pollution has been linked with a variety of human ailments, including lung disease, heart disease, stroke and cancer.

The simulation looked at the relationship between ozone and PM2.5 concentrations and population declines in cities across the United States. CDC data helped the simulation identify the number of deaths attributable to air pollution.

According to the model, deaths caused by air pollution declined by 49 percent between 1990 and 2010.

"These health improvements likely have continued beyond 2010 as we observe that air pollutant concentrations have continued to decrease," researcher Yuqiang Zhang said in a news release.

Research published last month determined environmental regulations were largely to thank for improving air quality during the latter half of the 20th century.

Though good news, the results of the latest study offer a reminder of the pollution's pervasive impact on human health. The simulation showed 1 in every 35 deaths in the U.S. can be at least partially attributed to air pollution.

Previous studies have shown air pollution shortens global life expectancy by at least a year.

"Even though we've seen some tangible success, there are still people dying, and a public health challenge remains going forward," said Jason West, professor of environmental sciences and engineering at the UNC. "New federal policies curtailing air pollution regulations likely will slow the improvement in air quality or possibly make air quality worse."
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Teens who use Juul e-cigarettes appear to be oblivious to the addictive potential, even when they already show signs of being hooked on the nicotine delivered by the devices, a new study shows.

Teens reported using Juuls about twice as often as those smoking conventional cigarettes, according to a survey conducted in 10 California high schools.

"The youth who were using Juuls were using them more often," said senior researcher Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, a professor of pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine. "They were using them a significantly greater number of days, which gives us a concern whether they are addicted to those products."

Despite this, most teens said they didn't feel they were addicted to Juul, Halpern-Felsher said.

"When you asked them about their perceptions of addiction regarding these products, they didn't think they were addictive," Halpern-Felsher said. "There was a real disconnect between how they perceived these products and how their bodies are reacting to them."

Juul accounts for two-thirds of the U.S. e-cigarette market, researchers said. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently launched an ambitious campaign to warn teens about the dangers of e-cigarettes and to stop Juul sales to young people.

Juul devices resemble a traditional USB flash drive, but they pack a potent nicotine punch. Each colorful e-liquid pod contains as much nicotine as a pack-and-a-half to two packs of traditional cigarettes, Halpern-Felsher said.

Experts are concerned that Juuls are tailor-made to target a youth audience, given the sleek look of the devices and the fact that the pods come in many different fruit and candy flavors.

Juul Labs responded to the new study with a statement denying the products' appeal to young people.

"We agree that underage use of Juul is completely unacceptable and it is directly opposed to our mission of eliminating cigarettes by offering existing adult smokers a true alternative to combustible cigarettes. We stand committed to working with those who want to keep nicotine products out of the hands of young people," the company said in a statement.

For the study, the researchers asked 445 California teens and young adults about their knowledge of and use of Juul, as part of a larger tobacco study that's been ongoing since 2014.

About half of the participants had heard of Juul, and around 16 percent had used the brand -- fewer than had used other forms of e-cigarettes (30 percent) or conventional tobacco cigarettes (24 percent).

But Juul users reported using their device more often over the past week and past month than either smokers or other e-cigarette users, the findings showed.

Juul users had vaped an average 1.5 days during the past week, and 6.7 days within the past month.

By comparison, cigarette users smoked an average 0.7 days during the past week and 3 days within the past month. Users of other types of e-cigarettes vaped 0.8 days within the past week and 3.2 days during the past month.

Juul users also scored as high as users of other e-cigarettes on the Hooked on Nicotine Checklist, a questionnaire designed to gauge nicotine addiction, the researchers found.

Flavors appeared to be attractive to Juul users. About 28 percent said their first pod ever vaped was fruit-flavored and 27 percent said it was menthol or mint-flavored, according to the report.

"Youth are using more the fruit- and mint-flavored," Halpern-Felsher said. "That's what's attracting them to using these products, whereas if you kept Juul as a product that was more for adults and only flavored like classic tobacco, youth may not be using them."

Halpern-Felsher added that she's very concerned that teenagers are creating a lifelong addiction by using Juul.

"In young people with developing brains, you can become addicted with a few cigarettes if you're using regularly," Halpern-Felsher said. "We do know from other vaping products that adolescents and young adults who use those products are significantly more likely to go on to use a combustible cigarette product."

But Dr. Christy Sadreameli, a spokeswoman for the American Lung Association, said that even if teens don't move on to smoking cigarettes after using Juul, they are still creating an addiction that will cost them.

"I would say even if they just stay with Juul forever, indefinitely, they've created an addiction that's going to be expensive. It may be life-long," Sadreameli said.

"It's much more likely to be a permanent thing, because teens have an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex of their brain. They're more likely to get addicted, in general," she explained. "Using a very high-potency nicotine product during that vulnerable period of life, it's just a bad combination."

Action needs to be taken to remove flavors from all e-cigarettes, including Juul, Halpern-Felsher said. Regulators also should step in and block advertising that targets teenagers.

"Youth, when shown advertisements for flavored vapes, they really believe those ads are targeting them," Halpern-Felsher said. "We really need to get flavors out of the products and out of the ads."

The new study was published online Oct. 19 in the journal JAMA Network Open.
More information

The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more about the Hooked on Nicotine Checklist.

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Contrary to popular belief, heart surgery patients who leave the hospital on a weekend or holiday do not have a higher risk for readmission, a new study finds.

Some studies have reported the readmission rate after major heart surgery is as high as 22 percent.

Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles looked at approximately 4,900 heart surgery patients discharged from the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center between 2008 and 2016. Nearly 20 percent left the hospital on a weekend or holiday.

"We were surprised to find that patients discharged on weekends and holidays had similar readmission rates and outcomes as patients who were cleared on weekdays," said co-author Dr. Peyman Benharash, a heart surgeon at UCLA.

"Prior planning was likely a critical aspect of successful weekend and holiday discharges at our institution," he added.

Use of beta blockers before surgery, tobacco use and surgical site infections were predictors of rehospitalization, but day of discharge was not, the researchers found.

In all, 11.4 percent of heart surgery patients discharged on weekdays and 10.9 percent of those who left the hospital on weekends and holidays were readmitted within 30 days, according to the study.

The findings were published online Oct. 11 in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery.

Reagan UCLA Medical Center said it took several steps in 2010 to reduce readmission rates.

As part of that program, patients receive detailed medication instructions and discharge kits equipped with wireless blood pressure monitors, blood oxygen meters, weight scales and miniature electrocardiogram sensors synced to a mobile tablet device.

The mobile app prompts patients to take daily measurements. Results are reported to hospital staff if they are outside normal ranges, allowing for quick intervention.

Patients also receive routine follow-up phone calls for four weeks.

"No individual component will significantly alter patient outcomes. Rather, a synergy of patient empowerment and access to outpatient counseling and care will allow for alleviation of patient anxiety and early recognition of complications should they arise," Benharash said in a journal news release.
More information

The U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute has more on heart surgery.
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The same type of bacteria that causes stomach cancer may also increase colon cancer risk, especially in black Americans, a new study finds.

Researchers analyzed data from more than 4,000 colon or rectal cancer cases in the United States. They found a significant association between rates of these cancers and infection with a virulent strain of H. pylori bacteria that's especially common among black Americans.

The findings do not prove that H. pylori causes colon or rectal cancer, however. Further investigation is required, the study authors noted.

"The link between infection and cancer is intriguing, particularly if we can eradicate it with a simple round of antibiotics," said lead study author Meira Epplein, a cancer epidemiologist at Duke Cancer Institute.

"Our study provides strong evidence that we need to pursue this research to establish a definitive cause-and-effect," Epplein added in a Duke University news release.

The researchers found that antibodies indicating H. pylori infection were equally common in colorectal cancer patients and people without the cancer -- four in 10 patients tested positive.

However, there were significant racial differences.

White patients had below average H pylori infection rates, Asian Americans had average rates, while blacks and Hispanics had high rates. Among blacks, rates were 71 percent among colorectal cancer patients and 65 percent among non-cancer patients. Among Hispanics, rates were 74 percent among the cancer patients and 77 percent among those without cancer.

Looking at antibodies to four H. pylori proteins, the researchers found one protein in particular, VacA, was most strongly linked with increased risk of colorectal cancer in black Americans. High levels of antibodies to this protein were associated with colorectal cancer rates in blacks and Asian Americans.

"It was surprising to find VacA antibodies increased the odds of colorectal cancer in African Americans and Asian Americans, and not in whites and Latinos," Epplein said. "This is a big question -- are people harboring different bacteria based on genetic origin or heritage? This is part of what we need to figure out."

Further studies might reveal if antibodies to the VacA protein could serve as a marker of colorectal cancer risk, even if it isn't causing the cancer directly, Epplein said.

The findings were published online Oct. 5 in the journal Gastroenterology.
More information

The American Cancer Society has more on colorectal cancer.
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