Tag Archives: south

Head impact detectors tested at New York high school

MIDDLETOWN, N.Y. – & Students at a New York high school are helping to test new technology that could someday alert football coaches that an athlete might have suffered a concussion. The Times Herald-Record, of Middletown, reports that students at Middletown High School wore impact-sensing mouth guards during three days of intramural practices over the past week. The devices are being developed by a Connecticut company, i1 Biometrics. They contain a gyroscope and feed wireless data about jarring head movements to a laptop. The idea is to give coaches a way of detecting dangerous hits while a game is still in progress. The company hopes to use data collected in the Middletown sessions to refine its software. More testing is planned next fall at Purdue University and the University of South Carolina.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/06/08/head-impact-detectors-tested-at-new-york-high-school/

Nontoxic cancer therapy proves effective against metastatic cancer

The study, "The Ketogenic Diet and Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Prolong Survival in Mice with Systemic Metastatic Cancer," was published online today in PLOS ONE. Led by Dominic D’Agostino, PhD, principal investigator in the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Physiology at the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, the research shows the effects of combining two nontoxic adjuvant cancer therapies, the ketogenic diet and hyperbaric oxygen therapy, in a mouse model of late-stage, metastatic cancer…

Nearly all US states see hefty drop in teen births

NEW YORK – & The nation's record-low teen birth rate stems from robust declines in nearly every state, but most dramatically in several Mountain States and among Hispanics, according to a new government report. All states but West Virginia and North Dakota showed significant drops over five years. But the Mountain States of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada and Utah saw rates fall by 30 percent or more. In 22 states, teen Hispanic birth rates plunged at least 40 percent, which was described as “just amazing,” by the report's lead author, Brady Hamilton of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. What's driving the declines? No one can say for sure. Experts believe the explanation is complicated and probably varies a bit from state to state. The national figure has been falling since 1991, aside from a brief interruption in 2006 and 2007. The CDC report released Thursday is based on birth certificates for 2007 through 2011. Last year, the CDC announced the overall improvement in teen births: a record low of 31 births per 1,000 teens ages 15 to 19. That compares to 42 births per 1,000 five years earlier. The new report focuses on state figures in 2011: -- Lowest rates are in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Vermont, each with rates under 17 per 1,000. -- Highest rates overall continue to be in the South, led by Arkansas and Mississippi, each with rates of about 50 per 1,000. In Arkansas, the majority of teen births are to white moms. In Mississippi, the majority are black. -- White teens continue to have the lowest birth rate nationally -- about 22 births per 1,000. Black teens saw a larger improvement, but their rate was still more than twice the white rate, at 47 per 1,000. -- Overall, the Hispanic rate plummeted from 75 to 49 per 1,000, now virtually a tie with the black rate. The teen drop in the last five years coincided with an overall decline in births, which experts attribute to a weak economy that dampened enthusiasm for having children. Hispanic women have been part of that trend, possibly due to the economy and to illegal immigration crackdowns in some states that reduce the number of young Hispanic females entering the country from Mexico and other nations, said John Santelli, a Columbia University professor of population and family health. That means new immigrants are having less impact on birth statistics, and second- and third-generation families are having more influence. As time goes on, Hispanics -- like other immigrant groups before them -- tend to adopt American customs and practices. “There is more attention on education, career, and the future,” said Dr. Janet Realini, head of Healthy Futures of Texas, a San Antonio-based organization focused on preventing teen and unplanned pregnancies. Hispanic rates, though, continue to be much higher than those for blacks and whites in most of the states with the largest Hispanic populations, including California, Texas, New York, New Jersey, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Georgia. Texas has the highest number of teen births in the nation, with nearly 43,000 in 2011. Nearly two-thirds were to Hispanic moms. The overall improvement, though, is something to celebrate, said Bill Albert, chief program officer of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. “Geography, politics, or policy alone simply cannot explain the widespread declines,” Albert said in an email. “Credit goes to teens themselves who are clearly making better decisions about sex, contraception, and their future.”source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/23/nearly-all-us-states-see-hefty-drop-in-teen-births/

Sleep-deprived teen drivers more likely to crash

Too little sleep increases the risk of car crashes for young drivers, a new study confirms. In the study, drivers ages 17 to 24 who reported sleeping six or fewer hours per night were about 20 percent more likely to be involved in a car crash over a two-year period, compared with those who slept more than six hours a night. Car crashes among the sleep-deprived were more likely to occur between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. than at other hours. The findings held even after the researchers took into account factors that affect people's risk of a car crash, such as age, the number of driving hours per week, risky driving behavior such as speeding and a history of car crashes. Sleep deprivation is known to be a risk factor for car crashes it's estimated that drowsy driving is responsible for 20 percent of all car crashes in the United States, the researchers say. However, most studies to date have not focused on young people. Young drivers should be a focus of education efforts to prevent drowsy driving “because this group experiences more impairment in alertness, mood and physical performance compared with older age groups with similar sleep deprivation,” the researchers said. The new study involved more than 19,000 young, newly licensed drivers living in New South Wales, Australia, who answered questions about their sleep habits, including how many hours they slept on weeknights and weekends. Researchers then tracked the participants for two years, and obtained police reports to document car crashes. Among drivers who reported getting six or fewer hours of sleep a night, 9.4 percent were involved in a crash, compared with 6.9 percent of those who reported more than six hours of sleep a night. The new findings “may help increase awareness of the impact of reduced sleep hours on crash risk and highlight subgroups of young drivers and times of day for targeted intervention,” the researchers write in the May 20 issue of the journal JAMA Pediatrics. The researchers noted that participants were only asked about their sleep habits once during the study, and the exact number of hours participants slept on the day before they were involved in a crash is not known. Follow Rachael Rettner @RachaelRettner. Follow MyHealthNewsDaily @MyHealth_MHND, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on LiveScience.Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/21/sleep-deprived-teen-drivers-more-likely-to-crash/

New, more accurate way of imaging lung cancer tumors

Their study appeared in the March issue of Pattern Recognition. Lung cancer is the deadliest cancer in men and women. According to the National Institutes of Health, the five-year survival rate (16.3 percent) is worse than many other cancers, such as colon (65.2 percent), breast (90.0 percent) and prostate (99.9 percent)…