WASHINGTON — People who sleep less than seven hours a night are three times as likely to catch a cold as their more well-rested friends and neighbours, U.S. researchers reported on Monday. The study supports the theory that sleep is important to immune function, said Sheldon Cohen and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Volunteers who spent less time in bed, or who spent their time in bed tossing and turning instead of snoozing, were much more likely to catch a cold when viruses were dripped into their noses, they found. People who slept longer and more soundly resisted infection better, they reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine. ‘Although sleep’s relationship with the immune system is well-documented, this is the first evidence that even relatively minor sleep disturbances can influence the body’s reaction to cold viruses,’ Cohen said in a statement. ‘It provides yet another reason why people should make time in their schedules to get a complete night of rest.’ Cohen’s team tested 153 healthy volunteers, locking them in a hotel for five days after infecting them with a cold virus. They had been interviewed daily for the previous two […]
SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco’s surveillance cameras in high-crime areas do not prevent violent crime, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California. The long-awaited study by the UC Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society found the program is hurt by lack of training and oversight, a failure to integrate footage with other police efforts, poor quality cameras, and what may be a fundamental weakness of cameras as anti-crime devices. Mayor Newsom began the program four years ago, but out of concern for people’s privacy, police are not allowed to monitor cameras in real time. Investigators must wait until a crime is reported before looking at footage. Researchers reviewed only the cameras obtained by Newsom. It did not examine those used by the San Francisco Housing Authority in public housing developments. Though they did find no real effect on violent crime, researchers say they appear to have an impact on petty crime. Property crimes were down 24 percent in areas with cameras.
President-elect Barack Obama plans to issue an executive order on his first full day in office ordering the closing of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, people briefed by Obama transition officials said Monday. But experts say it is likely to take many months, perhaps as long as a year, to empty the prison that has drawn international criticism since it received its first prisoners seven years ago this week. One transition official said the new administration expected that it would take several months to transfer some of the remaining 248 prisoners to other countries, decide how to try suspects and deal with the many other legal challenges posed by closing the camp. People who have discussed the issues with transition officials in recent weeks said it appeared that the broad outlines of plans for the detention camp were taking shape. They said transition officials appeared committed to ordering an immediate suspension of the Bush administration’s military commissions system for trying detainees. In addition, people who have conferred with transition officials said the incoming administration appeared to have rejected a proposal to seek a new law authorizing indefinite detention inside the United States. The Bush administration […]
The Food and Drug Administration does almost nothing to police the financial conflicts of doctors who conduct clinical trials of drugs and medical devices in human subjects, government investigators are reporting. Moreover, the investigators say, agency officials told them that trying to protect patients from such conflicts was not worth the effort. In 42 percent of clinical trials, the agency did not receive forms disclosing doctors’ financial conflicts and did nothing about the problem, according to the investigation, which was conducted by the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services and whose results were scheduled to be made public Monday. In 31 percent of the trials in which the agency did receive the required forms, agency reviewers did not document that they looked at the information. And in 20 percent of the cases in which doctors revealed significant financial conflicts, neither the F.D.A. nor the sponsoring companies took any action to deal with the conflicts, the investigators found. Karen Riley, a spokeswoman for the F.D.A, said the agency opposed reviewing doctors’ financial conflicts before trials because they represented just one possible source of bias. A similar investigation by the inspector general last […]
The first baby in the UK tested before conception for a genetic form of breast cancer has been born. Doctors at University College London said the girl and her mother were doing well following the birth this week. The embryo was screened for the altered BRCA1 gene, which would have meant the girl had a 80% chance of developing breast cancer. Women in three generations of her husband’s family have been diagnosed with the disease in their 20s. Paul Serhal, the fertility expert who treated the couple, said: ‘This little girl will not face the spectre of developing this genetic form of breast cancer or ovarian cancer in her adult life. ‘The parents will have been spared the risk of inflicting this disease on their daughter. ‘The lasting legacy is the eradication of the transmission of this form of cancer that has blighted these families for generations.’ Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) involves taking a cell from an embryo at the eight-cell stage of development, when it is around three-days old, and testing it. This is before conception – defined as when the embryo is implanted in the womb. Doctors then select […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
