NEW YORK — Moderate drinking may lengthen your life, while too much may shorten it, researchers from Italy report. Their conclusion is based on pooled data from 34 large studies involving more than one million people and 94,000 deaths. According to the data, drinking a moderate amount of alcohol — up to four drinks per day in men and two drinks per day in women — reduces the risk of death from any cause by roughly 18 percent, the team reports in the Archives of Internal Medicine. However, ‘things radically change’ when consumption goes beyond these levels, study leader Dr. Augusto Di Castelnuovo, from Catholic University of Campobasso, said in a statement. Men who have more than four drinks per day and women who have more than two drinks per day not only lose the protection that alcohol affords, but they increase their risk of death, the data indicate. The reason why men are protected at up to four drinks per day, while women lose the protection after two glasses has to do with how men and women metabolize alcohol, researchers say. It’s been shown that when men and women who drink the same amount of […]
More Americans, especially the elderly, now have their blood pressure under control, a new study finds. ‘It is hard to attribute the improvement to any particular factor,’ said study author Bernard M.Y. Cheung, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Hong Kong. His report appears in the Dec. 12 issue of Hypertension. ‘We have tried to see if the explanation lies in better awareness, detection or treatment. There is no statistically significant increase in these, so probably all of these contribute in a small way.’ Whatever the reason, the numbers from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999-2004, which include more than 14,500 people, tell an encouraging story. Hypertension — high blood pressure — is a major risk factor for heart attack, stroke, heart failure and kidney failure. In the study, blood pressure was regarded as being under control at a reading below 140/90, or 130/80 for people with diabetes. From 1999-2000 and 2003-2004, the percentage of Americans aged 60 and older who met those criteria rose from 26.4 percent to 36.7 percent, the study found. Awareness of the importance of blood pressure control rose from 70.6 percent to 81 percent, and treatment rates […]
WASHINGTON - Scientists appear to have found a fingerprint of Alzheimer’s disease in patients’ spinal fluid, a step toward a long-awaited test for the memory-robbing disease that today can be diagnosed definitively only at autopsy. Researchers at New York’s Weill Cornell Medical College discovered a pattern of 23 proteins floating in spinal fluid that, in very preliminary testing, seems to identify Alzheimer’s - not perfectly, but with pretty good accuracy. Far more research is needed before doctors could try spinal-tap tests in people worried they have Alzheimer’s, specialists caution. But the scientists already are preparing for larger studies to see if this potential ‘biomarker’ of Alzheimer’s holds up. ‘We’re looking to an era in which the kinds of uncertainties that many patients and their families face about the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease will no longer be a problem,’ predicts Dr. Norman Relkin, a neurologist and the study’s senior researcher. Currently, doctors diagnose Alzheimer’s mainly by symptoms. That makes early diagnosis particularly difficult, and even more advanced disease can be confused with other forms of dementia. Nor is there a good way to track the disease’s progression, important for decisions about patient care as well as […]
LONDON — Security experts have warned that computer hackers will spark a multi-billion pound ‘cyber war’ in 2007, by targeting mobile phones, text messaging and community websites such as MySpace. As people are more aware of email scams, criminals are finding new ways to commit online fraud, sell fake goods or tap into corporate secrets. Dave Rand of Internet security firm Trend Micro said, ‘The attacks are becoming more sophisticated. It’s all about making money. And they’re making a lot of it.’ It is predicted that in 2007 hackers will focus on social networking sites, such as MySpace, in order to gather information for more focused attacks on people’s computers. Viruses that secretly record people’s keystrokes or send out millions of spam email messages could infect many computers. Identity theft fraudsters will look through sites which allow people to leave their pictures and personal details in order to find targets for ‘phishing’ attacks – fraudulent emails aimed at tricking people into revealing credit card numbers. Hackers will also target people using instant messaging services or making telephone calls over the Internet in 2007, Trend Micro said.
New studies project that the Arctic Ocean could be mostly open water in summer by 2040 - several decades earlier than previously expected - partly as a result of global warming caused by emissions of greenhouse gases. The projections come from computer simulations of climate and ice and from direct measurements showing that the amount of ice coverage has been declining for 30 years. The latest modeling study, being published today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, was led by Marika Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. The study involved seven fresh simulations on supercomputers at the atmospheric center, as well as an analysis of simulations developed by independent groups. In simulations where emissions continue to rise, sea ice persists for long periods but then abruptly gives way to open water, Dr. Holland said. In the simulations, the shift seems to occur when a pulse of warm Atlantic Ocean water combines with the thinning and retreat of ice under the influence of the global warming trend. Scientists ascribe most of that planet-scale warming, including a warming of the shallow layers of the oceans, to the buildup of carbon dioxide and […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
