Category: Health

Mass drug administration reduces scabies cases by 90% in Solomon Islands’ communities

Tom Patriot

Mass drug administration (MDA) of two antibiotics can be highly effective at reducing cases of scabies and the bacterial infection impetigo, according to new research published in Lancet Infectious Diseases. The study was conducted by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI), the Kirby Institute at UNSW Sydney and the Solomon Islands Ministry of Health and Medical Services. It saw the entire population of Choiseul Province of the Solomon Islands (26,000 people), in the Pacific, given one round of the antibiotics ivermectin and azithromycin…

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Quick thinking? It’s all down to timing

Tom Patriot

Remember hearing people being called slow learners by teachers and parents? That oft-used description of someone who takes a wee bit longer to process information, now has a scientific basis for its existence. Scientists from the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine have found that the rapidity with which a person is able to grasp, process, understand, store and use information comes down to the speed and timing with which the neurons in the brain fire off. The closer the gap between the firing of one neuron and the…

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Eating later in the day may be associated with obesity

Tom Patriot

Eating later in the day may contribute to weight gain, according to a new study to be presented Saturday at ENDO 2019, the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting in New Orleans, La. Previous studies have suggested that later timing of eating and sleeping are related to obesity, said lead author Adnin Zaman, M.D., of the University of Colorado in Denver, Colo. “However, few studies have assessed both meal and sleep timing in adults with obesity, and it is not clear whether eating later in the day is associated with shorter sleep…

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Wearable sensors mimic skin to help with wound healing process

Tom Patriot

Researchers at Binghamton University, State University of New York, have developed skin-inspired electronics to conform to the skin, allowing for long-term, high-performance, real-time wound monitoring in users. “We eventually hope that these sensors and engineering accomplishments can help advance healthcare applications and provide a better quantitative understanding in disease progression, wound care, general health, fitness monitoring and more,” said Matthew Brown, a PhD student at Binghamton University. Biosensors are analytical devices that combine a biological component with a physiochemical detector to observe and analyze a chemical substance and its reaction…

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Measurement of thoughts during knowledge acquisition

Tom Patriot

In a recent learning study they were able to show that new conceptual information is stored along spatial dimensions in form of a mental map located in the hippocampus. Together with colleagues from the Donders Institute at Radboud University in Nijmegen, they observed brain activity patterns that support the idea that the neural mechanisms that support navigation in physical space might also be involved in conceptual learning. “We, as humans, are remarkably flexible in the use of our knowledge: For instance we are able to apply what we have learned…

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