Month: April 2014

A beverage with multiple benefits, green tea has inspired a number of research projects in recent years. One of the latest studies on the subject, published in the journal Psychopharmacology, offers additional evidence on how the drink can improve working memory and cognitive performance. Eager to evaluate claims of green tea's power to improve memory and to identify the mechanism behind it, researchers in Basel, Switzerland asked a group of healthy volunteers to consume a soft drink with green tea extract before solving a series of working memory tasks. The researchers, led by Christoph Beglinger and Stefan Borgwardt, of the University Hospital of Basel and the Psychiatric University Clinics respectively, observed improved connectivity between the frontal and parietal brain regions in the test subjects who were given green tea extract.

Under a strict interpretation of sharia, Saudi women are banned from driving and must gain formal permission from a male relative to leave the country, start a job or open a bank account. But King Abdullah is pushing cautious social reforms improving women’s rights in the face of conservative resistance. SPA said Saudi Arabia’s appointed Shoura Council, which advises the government on policy, had asked the education ministry to look into including sports for girls in state-run schools with the proviso they should conform to Sharia rules on dress and gender segregation. Although it would not become law until the ministry and cabinet approved the idea, the council’s vote represented a further pigeon step of progress for Saudi women.

By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) – The World Health Organization wants a "concerted effort" to drive down the cost of new hepatitis C drugs that offer a cure for the liver-destroying virus but are unaffordable for most infected people worldwide. The forthright comments from the UN agency on Wednesday add to pressure on drugmakers such as Gilead Sciences – which is already facing protests in the United States over its $1,000-a-day pill – to do more to improve access. In its first-ever treatment guidelines for the disease, issued at a meeting of international liver experts in London, the WHO strongly recommended new drugs from Gilead and Johnson & Johnson – with a big caveat on their cost. As with AIDS 15 years ago, modern drugs are transforming the ability to fight hepatitis C because pills such as Gilead's Sovaldi are far more effective and better-tolerated than older injection regimens, with cure rates well above 90 percent in many cases.

A study in the journal BMJ Open confirms that the perception that anorexia, bulimia, binge-eating and non-specific eating disorders like Eric’s are problems for women alone delays men getting help.

When performed on men over the age of 35, circumcision could reduce the risk of developing prostate cancer by nearly half, according to a Canadian study published in the British Journal of Urology International. The study's authors emphasize that the effect was particularly significant among black men. In addition to having strong cultural and religious significance, circumcision has been shown to reduce the risk of sexually transmitted infections. Now proponents of circumcision have yet another argument in their favor.

Teenage boys who spend more time in front of screens tend to have lower bone mineral density (BMD), according to a study of Norwegian students presented April 4 at the World Congress on Osteoporosis, Osteoarthritis and Musculoskeletal Diseases. The study, presented by lead author Dr. Anne Winther of the Arctic University of Norway, observed an adverse correlation between the time teenage boys spent in front of screens and their bone mineral density, which the author identifies as "a strong predictor of future fracture risk." Data was collected on the teenagers' screen habits and other lifestyle factors, and each participant's bone mineral density was evaluated in three ways: at the hip, at the femur neck and for the body overall.

By Elaine Lies TOKYO (Reuters) – Fighting back tears, a Japanese researcher under fire for fabricating parts of scientific papers hailed as breakthroughs in stem cell research said on Wednesday she stood by her discovery and hoped it could still help the world. The papers published by Haruko Obokata in the scientific journal Nature in January detailed simple ways to reprogram mature animal cells back to an embryonic-like state, allowing them to generate many types of tissues – offering hope for a way of replacing damaged cells or growing new organs in humans. But after reports pointed out irregularities in data and images used in the reports, Obokata's employer, RIKEN, a semi-governmental research institute, began investigating and last week said it had found her guilty of fabrication, apologizing for behavior that had damaged the credibility of Japan's scientific community. "It can definitely be explained how the mistakes happened," Obokata told a news conference carried live by most Japanese television stations.