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Lip piercing bad for gums

Researchers from Ohio State University - in a study of 58 young adults have found that having a lip piercing is bad for the gums and can make them shrink back from the teeth. The researchers also warn the longer people wear the piercing, the worse the recession.

29 Mar 2005

Smack that bottom - it can cure everything !!

Russian scientists at the Novosibirsk Institute of Medicine are claiming a beating on the naked buttocks with a cane is the perfect way to cure everything from depression to alcoholism.

29 Mar 2005

Clinical study of mirror neurons provides insights into autism and other disorders

Seeing is doing – at least it is when mirror neurons are working normally. But in autistic individuals, say researchers from the University of California, San Diego, the brain circuits that enable people to perceive and understand the actions of others do not behave in the usual way.

29 Mar 2005

Important link between kidney damage and cardiac problems

Scientists have identified an important link between kidney damage and cardiac problems, creating new possibilities for treating the primary cause of death in kidney disease patients.

29 Mar 2005

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) can successfully identify the characteristics of coronary plaques

A catheter-based imaging technology called optical coherence tomography (OCT) can successfully identify the characteristics of coronary plaques in patients with various cardiac symptoms. The report from researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) will appear in the journal Circulation.

29 Mar 2005

DNA sequencing made portable and faster by "colour-blind" technology

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) and Rice University have developed a"colour-blind" method of fluorescence detection which could open new doors that would take DNA sequencing to the patient's bedside, the doctor's office and even the scene of a crime or a battlefield.

29 Mar 2005

Marker for new blood vessel formation in tumors

In a paper in this month's freely-available online global health journal PLoS Medicine, Roland Haubner and colleagues describe how a compound they have developed can be used together with highly sensitive positron emission tomography (PET) scanning to measure the amount of new blood vessel growth in some tumors.

29 Mar 2005

Cells that might be able to suppres cat allergies

In a paper in this month's premier open-access medical journal PLoS Medicine, Mark Larche and colleagues from Imperial College London describe a subset of cells that might be able to suppress cells that cause cat allergy.

29 Mar 2005

Grapes inhibit cancer growth

Components in grapes, including some newly identified ones, work together to dramatically inhibit an enzyme crucial to the proliferation of cancer cells, say scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

29 Mar 2005

Herceptin - more powerful treatment for patients with HER-2-positive breast cancer

A new use of the drug Herceptin appears to offer a much more powerful treatment advantage than expected for patients with HER-2-positive breast cancer, say researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.

29 Mar 2005

Left-right brain mystery - trail is hot and cold

Australian National University (ANU) researchers have developed a new device that could potentially unravel the mysteries of the left and right brain by measuring ear temperature.

29 Mar 2005

Scientists out cancer cells in permanent coma

Scientists funded by Marie Curie Cancer Care and the Association for International Cancer Research have made an unexpected discovery that could point the way to a completely new approach to treating cancer.

29 Mar 2005

Hair follicle stem cells may provide an accessible source of stem cells for therapeutic applications

Hair grows quickly and is continually replenished which makes it an attractive source to harvest the amount of stem cells needed for treatments, but this, along with controversy surrounding the ethics of harvesting cells from embryos, has been a major stumbling block of stem cell research.

28 Mar 2005

Seniors like to "nip and tuck"

Research by the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) has found that pensioners now have the money and the motivation to go under the knife in a bid to look a few years younger. Men and women in their seventies and eighties are fuelling the boom in cosmetic surgery

28 Mar 2005

US Genome Project planned to beat cancer

In a project expected to cost $US1.35 billion over nine years, the United States Government's proposed "Human Cancer Genome Project", will open a new front in the battle against cancer, say US health officials.

28 Mar 2005

Researchers discover nicotine demethylase gene

U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Company (USSTC) announced today that scientists at its GenApps Inc. laboratories in Winchester, Kentucky, led by Drs. Mark Nielsen and Dongmei Xu, succeeded in discovering a key tobacco gene encoding nicotine demethylase.

28 Mar 2005

Players can become part of a video game

Duck, jab, back flip, shoot! If you've ever played an intensely engaging video game, you know that it can seem like your "self" has been transposed onto the game character—you might even find yourself acting out the character's movements while you are playing.

28 Mar 2005

Blind people more accurate at judging size than sighted people

Close your eyes and imagine a loaf of bread. With your eyes still closed, estimate with your hands the size of that loaf of bread. Do you think your mental representation is an accurate one? Specifically, how accurately have you gauged its size?

28 Mar 2005

Adult stem cells could be used to treat deaf patients in the future

Researchers at Indiana University School of Medicine are several steps closer to the day when a profoundly deaf patient's own bone marrow cells could be used to let him or her hear the world.

28 Mar 2005

Discovery of gene STAT6(B) may lead to new treatments for inflammatory diseases

In a paper featured in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), researchers from Boston University School of Dental Medicine report the discovery of a new gene, STAT6(B), that helps regulate production of the potentially deadly tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha) cytokine.

28 Mar 2005