If your phone supports wireless charging, but you don't want to clutter your nightstand with an ugly charging pad, you can build it straight into the furniture.
The video above does a great job of walking you through the process, but basically you'll use a chisel or router to create a cavity on the underside of the top of the nightstand, then slide the charger into place. The video uses an IKEA HEMNES nightstand and a Nokia Qi charger, but the basic steps should be similar no matter what you're working with. This particular arrangement does allow the charger to rest on the side wall of the nightstand, but if you aren't so lucky, a thin piece of scrap wood or metal will keep it from falling.
This is similar to a previously-mentioned project that added a PowerMat charger to a bookshelf, but this one doesn't require you to disassemble the charging base or permanently attach it to any furniture.
Wavii, the natural language technology startup, has updated its home page, and its previously-monochromatic logo, to officially confirm that it has been acquired by Google -- a deal that we noted earlier this week was "north of $30 million." And to set speculation running about what might be coming next, Wavii CEO Adrian Aoun confirmed that it will be shutting down its service so that it can use "our natural language research at Google in ways that may be useful to millions of people around the world."
Mammals learn feeding behaviors from their friends and family members
By Meghan Rosen
Web edition: April 25, 2013
Enlarge
A humpback whale slaps its tail on the ocean?s surface to help catch prey. Whales learn the hunting technique by spending time with other humpbacks.
Credit: Image courtesy of Jennifer Allen/Ocean Alliance
The phrase ?monkey see, monkey do? applies to humpback whales. Vervet monkeys and humpback whales both copy behaviors from their neighbors, researchers report April 25 in Science. The two studies suggest that, like humans, some wild animals pick up new habits from each other.
Accurately imitating one another?s actions is a ?potential building block of culture,? says cultural evolutionist Peter Richerson of the University of California, Davis, who was not involved with the work. Complex culture builds upon people learning skills from each other, he says.
Scientists have previously spotted signs of social learning in monkeys, birds and other animals, but most studies relied on field observations or experiments with captive animals, says cognitive biologist Andrew Whiten of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
To gauge the role of social learning in wild animals, Whiten?s team trained four groups of vervet monkeys living in a South African game preserve to eat either blue or pink corn and despise corn of the other color. Whiten and colleagues did this by soaking one type of colored corn in an aloe solution that the monkeys found disgusting.
Then the researchers waited four to six months until the monkeys had given birth to a new generation. The team brought out both colors of corn again ? but this time, none was tainted with the nasty flavor. Most of the adult monkeys stuck with the color they had learned was tasty, and all but one of but one of the 27 infants munched on the color that their group preferred.
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An infant vervet monkey follows his family?s example by munching on corn dyed pink.
Credit: Image courtesy of Erica van de Waal
Since adult male vervet monkeys migrate among groups, the researchers could observe that nine out of 10 males that moved from pink to blue groups or vice versa swapped their color preference and ate what the locals were eating.
The migrants may have been tapping into local knowledge about food, Whiten says. Or the animals could have been trying to fit in with their new friends. ?Trying to be like others is a way of bonding with another group,? he says.
Humpback whales learn from their buddies as well, reports marine biologist Luke Rendell, also from the University of St. Andrews ? in this case, a feeding behavior. Humpbacks commonly blow bubbles underwater to round up prey, but in 1980, a single whale was seen adding a new twist to the old technique: Before casting a bubble net, the whale whacked its tail on the sea?s surface. The loud smack shakes up the water and may help the whale catch more prey. Since then, more and more whales have adopted the skill, called lobtail feeding.
The new results suggest the more time whales spend with members of their species who lobtail feed, the faster the whales learn the technique.?
Rendell?s team drew on a gigantic collection of whale sightings in the Gulf of Maine, from a 27-year-long project. Whale watchers made more than 73,000 sightings, and logged date, identity, and behavior information (including hunting technique) about each humpback they spotted. The research team then used network analysis to draw connections between whales and their friends ? a social network for humpbacks.
The more lobtail-hunting friends a whale had, Rendell says, the more likely the animal was to pick up the skill. The results suggest that humpback whales, which researchers have previously shown learn songs from one another, also pass on hunting behaviors.?
?In this population, you?ve got multiple traditions going on,? Rendell says. He argues that this could constitute culture in the whales.
?Claims of tradition and culture in wild animals can be very contentious,? says evolutionary anthropologist Rachel Kendal of Durham University in England. Rendell?s group did a good job heading off potential criticisms, she says.
Still, Rendell says, ?I?d love to be able to say that the case is closed, but I think there will always be debate about culture in animals.? And now, when people have that debate, he says, humpback whales will have to be part of it.
Ants play a variety of important roles in many ecosystems. As frequent visitors to flowers, they can benefit plants in their role as pollinators when they forage on sugar-rich nectar. However, a new study reveals that this mutualistic relationship may actually have some hidden costs. By transmitting sugar-eating yeasts to the nectar on which they feed, ants may be indirectly altering the nectar-chemistry and thus affecting subsequent pollinator visitations.
Many species of plants benefit from interacting with ants, and some even secrete special sugary substances to attract ants. Plants produce sugar, in the form of nectar, and in exchange ants provide services such as pollination or protection from herbivores.
The main components of nectar that attract pollinators include three dominant sugars?sucrose, fructose, and glucose?and amino acids (or proteins). The chemical composition of nectar differs among plant species and has been thought to be a conservative trait linked to pollinator type. For example, plants pollinated by hummingbirds tend to have nectar with high amounts of sucrose. In addition, nectar composition is thought to be regulated by the plant.
"When people think about how flowers are pollinated, they probably think about bees," notes Clara de Vega, a postdoctoral researcher at the Estaci?n Biol?gica de Do?ana, Spain. "But ants also pollinate flowers, and I am interested in the role ants play in pollination since it is still poorly understood."
De Vega joined forces with Carlos M. Herrera, an evolutionary ecologist at the Estaci?n Biol?gica de Do?ana, to investigate the relationship between ant pollinators and nectarivorous yeasts. Nectar-dwelling yeasts, which consume sugars, have recently been discovered in the flowers of many temperate and tropical plant species. De Vega and Herrera have already discovered that some ant species not only carry certain types of sugar-metabolizing yeasts on their bodies, but they also effectively transmit these yeasts to the nectar of flowers they visit.
In their most recent work, published in the American Journal of Botany, De Vega and Herrera investigated whether flowers visited by these ants differed from flowers that were not visited by ants in their sugar chemistry, and whether sugar-chemistry was correlated with the abundance of ant-transmitted yeasts found in the nectar.
By excluding ants from visiting inflorescences of a perennial, parasitic plant, Cytinus hypocistis, and comparing the nectar chemistry to inflorescences that were visited by ants, the authors tested these ideas experimentally.
When the authors compared the sugar content in the nectar of flowers visited by ants versus those enclosed in nylon mesh bags to exclude ants, they found that nectar of flowers exposed to ants had higher levels of fructose and glucose, but lower levels of sucrose compared with the ant-excluded flowers.
Interestingly, in flowers visited by ants, there was a high correlation between yeast cell density and sugar content. Nectar that had higher densities of yeast had more fructose and less sucrose, suggesting that the types of yeasts change the sugar content of the nectar. Flowers that were excluded from ants did not have any yeast in their nectar.
"Our study has revealed that ants can actually change the nectar characteristics of the flowers they are pollinating," says de Vega. "The microorganisms, specifically yeasts, that are present on the surface of ants change the composition of sugar in the flower?s nectar."
"This means that nectar composition is not completely controlled by the flower?it is something created in cooperation with the ants that visit the flower," she notes. "We also think that these ant-transported yeasts might have the potential to affect plant reproduction."
Indeed, if a plant cannot control the sugar content of its nectar, then it may lose some of its target pollinators, which would potentially affect overall seed set and plant fitness.
Moreover, if introducing these yeasts to nectar changes the chemistry of the very components that serve to attract pollinators, then perhaps ants are indirectly changing the foraging behavior of subsequent flower visitors and thereby affecting seed dispersal patterns.
This study has revealed an additional layer in the complex association between ants and flowering plants, as pollinating ants alter sugar-nectar chemistry in flowers via sugar-consuming yeasts. But the story does not end here. De Vega plans to continue researching the role that these nectarivorous yeasts play on the reproduction of plants.
"I plan to study the whole interaction of plants, yeasts, and pollinators?how are they interrelated and what mechanisms shape these relations?"
American Journal of Botany: http://www.amjbot.org/
Thanks to American Journal of Botany for this article.
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Current president and CEO of Nintendo Co., Ltd. Saturo Iwata was just given a new gig by his struggling employer. In addition to the roles he already has, Iwata will now assume the position of CEO of Nintendo of America (NoA), replacing current chief executive and chairman Tatsumi Kimishima, who is transferring to the company's Kyoto headquarters to serve as the General Manager of both the Corporate Analysis and Administration as well as the General Affairs Division.
Iwata will now oversee NoA president and Chief Operating Officer Reggie Fils-Aime. His and Kimishima's new appointments are just one part of an executive-level reshuffling for Nintendo's board of directors as several key members plan to retire.
In a statement announcing the new appointments, Nintendo said the move will support "the company's unified global strategy" and "allow streamlined decision making and enhance Nintendo's organizational agility in the current competitive environment."
Nintendo announced the executive shifts alongside its 2013 fiscal year earnings report, which saw the company return to profitability after posting its first loss in three decades the previous year.
The news is hardly encouraging for the world's largest video game console maker, however. Nintendo reported a net profit of ?7.10 billion ($71.7 million) for the year ended in March, up from a loss of ?43.20 billion in the previous year but nearly half the company's projected ?14 billion.
Much of this income gap stems from lower-than-expected sales of its new home entertainment console, the Wii U, which was first released last November. The company announced that just 3.45 million Wii U units have shipped worldwide so far?more than half a million units short of its January forecast for 4 million, which was itself a diminished forecast from the original 5.5 million projection. These figures imply that the Wii U only shipped an additional 390,000 units globally in the last three months.
The company predicted that net income will rise to ?55 billion yen in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2014, saying that it expects to sell 9 billion Wii U consoles in the coming year. Analysts, however, have remained wary about the console's commercial prospects as it faces increased competition from competitors like Sony and Microsoft ? both of which are expected to release next-generation gaming devices of their own in time for the 2013 holiday season.
Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities who told NBC News last week in no uncertain terms that he thinks Iwata "sucks" at his job, said the Wii U is "just a baffling thing" that disregards the very interests of the home console market to which it is meant to appeal.
"I've always said that I think they came up with a solution and never identified the problem that they were solving," Pachter said.
"And the proof of that is: how many people call it a tablet when it first came out?" he added, referring to the large touchscreen controller officially known as a "GamePad" that comes with the device.
Pachter didn't doubt the attraction that many gamers still feel to beloved Nintendo game franchises like "Super Mario Bros." and "The Legend of Zelda," but he felt that the fact that Nintendo had to release a separate Xbox 360-style "Wii U Pro" controller showed that the company no longer knows how to appeal to many of the gamers would be willing to make a hefty investment into a new console.
And without a guaranteed audience of dedicated console gamers like Sony or Microsoft has, the company risks losing its already tenuous third-party support to make new games for the Wii U.
"It doesn't appear they're going to get long-lasting third party support," Pachter said. "The ones that did support are going to abandon it if it doesn't sell better," presumably once the PlayStation 4 or new Xbox can offer developers a larger customer base than the Wii U can.
Without that third-part support, Nintendo is left with its many "Mario" and "Zelda" franchises, which have certainly done enough to support the 3DS, but not necessarily an additional console ? and a pricier one at that.
"None of us can figure out why exactly we want one," Pachter said. "We don't need a home console that's like the 3DS, and that's just what the Wii U is."
China sent a fleet of patrol ships today to the sea area it disputes with Japan, following a controversial visit by Japanese officials to a war shrine. The latest moves are seen as a setback for a diplomatic resolution.
By Ralph Jennings,?Correspondent / April 23, 2013
Chinese surveillance ships sail in formation in waters claimed by Japan near disputed islands called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China in the East China Sea Tuesday.
Kyodo News/AP
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Spats between Asia?s two most powerful nations, China and Japan, have grown uncomfortably routine since Tokyo nationalized a group of disputed islands in September. On Tuesday tensions reached a new and potentially worrisome high.
Skip to next paragraph Ralph Jennings
Taiwan Correspondent
Ralph Jennings has covered news in China, Taiwan and Southeast Asia for the past 14 years. He lives in Taipei and holds a degree in mass communication from the University of California in Berkeley.?
Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly Digital Edition
China sent eight surveillance vessels into Japanese territorial waters, apparently to track a flotilla of Japanese activists who had gone to look at the contested area. China?s presence ? an effort to exercise authority in the region ? is its largest since Japan nationalized the uninhabited islets, Kyodo News reported.
China?s use of ships in disputed waters isn?t expected to cause a war, but it raises the specter of a miscalculation at sea that could in turn create a new diplomatic row, set off more protests in Chinese cities, and strike another blow at Japanese business caught in the crossfire. Hopes of polite negotiations are also off the map for now.
"Only when Japan faces up to its aggressive past can it embrace the future and develop friendly relations with its Asian neighbors," Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a news conference on Monday.
As if the 80 pro-Tokyo activists weren?t enough to upset Beijing, that same day 168 Japanese lawmakers visited a Shinto shrine that?s reviled elsewhere in Asia for memorializing World War II heroes. Japan occupied parts of China from 1931 to 1945. Three cabinet ministers had already visited Yasukuni Shrine over the weekend, causing calculated reaction.
In protest, a high-level Chinese military official bailed on a trip this week to Japan as the foreign ministry lashed out.?
And China?s surveillance vessels probably weren?t loaded with olive branches. The Communist country has increasingly jousted?with Japan since around 2005 as it rose to become the world?s second largest economy.
?Such an intrusion [in the East China Sea] was certainly not undertaken spontaneously, but would have been planned and coordinated some time in advance for execution as soon as an opportunity presented itself,? says Scott Harold, associate political scientist with US-based think tank the RAND Corporation.
Japan controls the disputed islets, which it calls the Senkakus, despite 40 years of competing claims from China and a wave of destructive anti-Japanese street protests in Chinese cities last year. China criticizes the Shinto shrine visits because a memorial at the venue also honors 14 major war criminals.
The two sides are also disputing rights to an undersea natural gas field, while China periodically accuses Japan of not apologizing for the war of the 1940s. Japan says it has apologized.?
China and Japan, as the world?s No. 2 and No. 3 economies, also mean a lot to each other trade wise. The number of Japanese subsidiaries in China has grown eight times since the 1990s, and they sold $147 billion worth of goods to the country in the 2011 fiscal year.
Will the two keep meeting, along with South Korea, to discuss a three-way trade agreement? After momentum last month, the latest raises concern that this puts progress on ice.
?Both sides need to be more flexible,? suggests Ralph Cossa, president with US think tank Pacific Forum Center for Strategic and International Studies. ?Japan needs to acknowledge that the territory is in dispute, at least from a Chinese perspective, and the Chinese need to acknowledge that they are under Japan?s administrative control and that a military solution is unacceptable.?
(Reuters) - Commercial shipping traffic was moving again on the Mississippi River south of St. Louis after a pair of barge accidents that forced the U.S. Coast Guard to close the waterway over the weekend, but navigation remained severely impaired further north.
Flooding following torrential rains across the central United States forced the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to close about a dozen locks on the Illinois River and the Mississippi River north of St. Louis late last week.
The U.S. Coast Guard will also close a section of the Illinois River near Peoria to all traffic later on Monday to protect levees, and was considering shipping restrictions in other areas as heavy currents made navigation treacherous.
The shipping headaches come just three months after near-record-low water threatened to close the Mississippi River along a busy stretch from St. Louis to its confluence with the Ohio River at Cairo, Illinois.
"While the conditions are much different than they were this winter, the effects are quite the same. We're placing operational guidelines on the vessel industry and shutting parts of the river," said Coast Guard spokesman Colin Fogarty.
A 15-mile stretch of the Mississippi River near St. Louis was closed late Saturday after 114 barges primarily owned by American Commercial Lines (ACL) broke free from a fleeting area and 11 of them, all containing coal, sank.
All of the barges were secured and an aerial survey on Monday found that none of the sunken barges posed a risk to navigation. The Coast Guard, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and ACL were coordinating plans to remove the sunken barges.
"Two of the barges were just barely outside the channel so we were able to allow navigation by them. There was also one barge that sunk in the middle of the channel, but it is currently under about 20 feet of water so it doesn't pose a threat," Fogarty said.
A queue of at least four upriver vessels and four downriver vessels towing 79 barges formed during the 36-hour closure and should be cleared quickly as the river was open to two-way traffic.
Another barge accident further south near Vicksburg, Mississippi, shuttered the river Sunday morning between mile markers 415 and 436 before one-way traffic was allowed to resume early on Monday.
Three grain barges and 27 coal barges had broken free of a barge tow. One sank and at least one struck a railroad bridge, the Coast Guard said.
When the river reopened to southbound traffic, 12 vessels pushing about 120 barges were awaiting passage. A northbound queue of 16 vessels pushing about 230 barges would be cleared through the area once the southbound queue had passed, the Coast Guard said.
The Army Corps shuttered about a dozen locks on the Illinois and Mississippi rivers late last week and over the weekend due to high water, but most could reopen by the end of April or early May, according to the latest river crest forecasts from the National Weather Service.
Grain export prices climbed as the shipping disruptions, expected to persist to some degree for at least another week, severed the farm-to-port supply pipeline for shippers at the Gulf of Mexico.
Some 60 percent of U.S. grain exports are shipped via the Mississippi River system from production areas in the Midwest to export terminals at the Gulf of Mexico. Various other commodities, including oil, coal and fertilizer are also shipped on the inland waterway system.
Spot corn prices at the Gulf rose to the highest in a month while soybean prices hit a three-month high as exporters scrambled for needed supplies.
(Reporting by Karl Plume in Chicago; Editing by Dan Grebler and Jim Marshall)
While teams are making the final adjustments to their game plans, the Nacogdoches County girls recently took time out of practice to learn more about the charity they are playing for at the KTRE Pineywoods Showdown.
The girls listened to a representative of the American Cancer Society and were able to take away a new understanding of what they are playing for.
"There were a lot of charities that they could have chosen and to choose the American Cancer Society really says a lot about these ladies," said Holly Randall, a volunteer for the organization.
"It has a lot more meaning to it and I think that when we play it's going to be about more than basketball and it puts more meaning to it," said Martinsville senior Gabriel Spencer.
"We're playing for the people of Nacogdoches," said Danny Enloe, the coach of the team. "That's the one thing about the charity that we chose, they are trying to keep as many of the proceeds in the county and we want to help our neighbors. That's what we are trying to accomplish."
The KTRE Pineywoods Showdown is Thursday, with the girls game tipping off at 6 p.m. The game pits the top seniors of Angelina County against the top seniors of Nacogdoches County.
Apr. 21, 2013 ? Intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) gives better results than standard radiotherapy in patients with early breast cancer, according to results from a randomised trial presented today (Sunday) to the 2nd Forum of the European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology (ESTRO). IMRT is an advanced, high-precision form of radiotherapy that can deliver an even dose of radiation, thus reducing the cosmetic problems that can often occur after breast radiotherapy.
"We believe that this study, the largest prospective trial in the world to test breast IMRT against standard two-dimensional radiotherapy, will be practice-changing at an international level," said Dr Charlottes Coles, from Addenbrooke's Hospital Oncology Centre, Cambridge, UK. "Analysing the results five years after treatment, we saw significant benefits in patients who had received IMRT."
The researchers analysed the radiotherapy treatment plans of 1145 patients with early breast cancer who had previously had breast-conserving surgery. The plans were screened to see if they would produce an uneven radiation dose with standard two-dimensional radiotherapy (2DRT). A total of 71% of the plans fell into this category, and those patients were randomised between standard 2DRT and IMRT. The 29% of patients whose plans would not produce an uneven dose were treated with standard 2D RT, but still followed up within the trial.
One of the aims of external radiotherapy is to treat the target -- in this case the whole breast -- with an even dose distribution, i.e. within a range of 95% to 107% of the prescribed dose. Too low a dose can risk tumour recurrence, and too high a dose can cause undesirable side-effects such as skin changes.
"The problem with 2D breast radiotherapy is that the dose distribution is only recorded across the central part of the breast. Usually it meets the 95-107% constraints, but the shape of the breast changes, so if the same plan is looked at in 3D, then there may well be areas with overly high doses. By modulating the intensity of the radiation beam, IMRT can be used to correct for this and smooth out the dose," said Dr Coles.
The researchers set out to see whether the effect of using IMRT in those patients who would have received a dose greater than 107% to parts of their breast with 2DRT would translate into clinical benefit. IMRT planning uses results from scans to determine the dose intensity that will best treat the tumour, and therefore is more complex and time-consuming than 2DRT planning, so there was an important need to see a clear advantage to patients from the use of the procedure.
The only previous study looking at this was much smaller, and rather than picking out all patients with doses greater than 107% and randomising them, it only included women with larger breasts who are already known to be more likely to have regions of dose above the upper limit. "Our trial was more inclusive as all women were able to take part and we could quantify those who would receive an uneven dose," said Dr Coles.
"We saw that fewer patients in the IMRT group developed skin telangiectasia (dilated blood vessels near the surface of the skin), and the overall cosmetic effect in the breast was better," she said. Although there was no significant difference between the two groups in breast shrinkage, breast oedema, breast induration (hardening), and pigmentation changes, the benefits of using IMRT in these patients were clear.
The researchers intend to follow up their work by analysing the patients' questionnaires to see whether IMRT has an influence on quality of life. The trial has also contributed 1000 blood samples to the UK translational research study RAPPER (Radiogenomics: Assessment of Polymorphisms for Predicting the Effects of Radiotherapy), which aims to ultimately develop individualised radiotherapy plans based on the analysis of individual patients' genetics.
"Although IMRT is employed increasingly in breast cancer, its use is far from universal throughout the world. We hope that the evidence of benefit shown in our trial will encourage its greater use, resulting in improved patient access and, ultimately, improved outcomes for breast cancer patients," said Dr Coles.
President of ESTRO, Professor Vincenzo Valentini, a radiation oncologist at the Policlinico Universitario A. Gemelli, Rome, Italy, said: "This study not only shows a better outcome for the women treated with IMRT, but has an additional value in defining the selection criteria for providing treatment to those patients who will benefit from new frontline technologies. In the study design, the patients who could be treated satisfactorily by standard technology were not referred for IMRT, avoiding the use of a complex technique where it was not necessary. At a time when resources are limited, individualised medicine can help us offer new technology only to those patients who will have a tangible benefit from it."
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40 percent of parents give young kids cough/cold medicine that they shouldn'tPublic release date: 22-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Mary F. Masson mfmasson@umich.edu 734-764-2220 University of Michigan Health System
Many parents disregard label warnings, give children under age 4 common medicines, according to new U-M National Poll on Children's Health
ANN ARBOR, Mich. Children can get five to 10 colds each year, so it's not surprising that adults often turn to over-the-counter cough and cold medicines to relieve their little ones' symptoms. But a new University of Michigan poll shows that many are giving young kids medicines that they should not use.
More than 40 percent of parents reported giving their children under age 4 cough medicine or multi-symptom cough and cold medicine, according to the latest University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health. Twenty-five percent gave those children decongestants.
In 2008, the federal Food and Drug Administration issued an advisory that these over-the-counter medicines not be used in infants and children under age 2. They have not been proven effective for young children and may cause serious side effects, says Matthew M. Davis, M.D., M.A.P.P., director of the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health.
In response to the FDA, manufacturers of over-the-counter cough and cold products changed their labels back in 2008, to state that the medicines should not be used for children under 4 years old.
"These products don't reduce the time the infection will lasts and misuse could lead to serious harm," says Davis. "What can be confusing, however, is that often these products are labeled prominently as 'children's' medications. The details are often on the back of the box, in small print. That's where parents and caregivers can find instructions that they should not be used in children under 4 years old," Davis says
The side effects from use of cough and cold medicines in young children may include allergic reactions, increased or uneven heart rate, drowsiness or sleeplessness, slow and shallow breathing, confusion or hallucinations, convulsions, nausea and constipation.
The poll found that use of the cough and cold medicines in children age four and under did not differ by parent gender, race/ethnicity or by household income.
"Products like these may work for adults, and parents think it could help their children as well. But what's good for adults is not always good for children," says Davis.
Davis says parents need to be vigilant about reading the directions and should always call their pediatrician or health care provider about questions regarding over-the-counter medications.
"Because young children often suffer from cold-like symptoms, more research is needed to test the safety and efficacy of these cough and cold medicines in our littlest patients," Davis says.
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Broadcast-quality video is available on request. See the video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRkQf1OUGJs
Full report: http://mottnpch.org/reports-surveys/parents-ignore-warning-labels-give-cough-cold-meds-young-kids
Website: Check out the Poll's new website: MottNPCH.org. You can search and browse over 70 NPCH Reports, suggest topics for future polls, share your opinion in a quick poll, and view information on popular topics. The National Poll on Children's Health team welcomes feedback on the new website, including features you'd like to see added. To share feedback, e-mail NPCH@med.umich.edu.
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mottnpch
Twitter: @MottNPCH
Purpose/Funding: The C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health based at the Child Health Evaluation and Research Unit at the University of Michigan and funded by the Department of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases and the University of Michigan Health System is designed to measure major health care issues and trends for U.S. children.
Data Source: This report presents findings from a nationally representative household survey conducted exclusively by GfK Custom Research, LLC GfK Custom Research, LLC (GfK), for C.S. Mott Children's Hospital via a method used in many published studies. The survey was administered in January 2013 to a randomly selected, stratified group of parents with a child age 0-3 (n=498) from GfK's web-enabled KnowledgePanel that closely resembles the U.S. population. The sample was subsequently weighted to reflect population figures from the Census Bureau. The survey completion rate was 57 percent among panel members contacted to participate. The margin of error is 8 to 11 percentage points.
Findings from the U-M C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health do not represent the opinions of the investigators or the opinions of the University of Michigan.
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40 percent of parents give young kids cough/cold medicine that they shouldn'tPublic release date: 22-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Mary F. Masson mfmasson@umich.edu 734-764-2220 University of Michigan Health System
Many parents disregard label warnings, give children under age 4 common medicines, according to new U-M National Poll on Children's Health
ANN ARBOR, Mich. Children can get five to 10 colds each year, so it's not surprising that adults often turn to over-the-counter cough and cold medicines to relieve their little ones' symptoms. But a new University of Michigan poll shows that many are giving young kids medicines that they should not use.
More than 40 percent of parents reported giving their children under age 4 cough medicine or multi-symptom cough and cold medicine, according to the latest University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health. Twenty-five percent gave those children decongestants.
In 2008, the federal Food and Drug Administration issued an advisory that these over-the-counter medicines not be used in infants and children under age 2. They have not been proven effective for young children and may cause serious side effects, says Matthew M. Davis, M.D., M.A.P.P., director of the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health.
In response to the FDA, manufacturers of over-the-counter cough and cold products changed their labels back in 2008, to state that the medicines should not be used for children under 4 years old.
"These products don't reduce the time the infection will lasts and misuse could lead to serious harm," says Davis. "What can be confusing, however, is that often these products are labeled prominently as 'children's' medications. The details are often on the back of the box, in small print. That's where parents and caregivers can find instructions that they should not be used in children under 4 years old," Davis says
The side effects from use of cough and cold medicines in young children may include allergic reactions, increased or uneven heart rate, drowsiness or sleeplessness, slow and shallow breathing, confusion or hallucinations, convulsions, nausea and constipation.
The poll found that use of the cough and cold medicines in children age four and under did not differ by parent gender, race/ethnicity or by household income.
"Products like these may work for adults, and parents think it could help their children as well. But what's good for adults is not always good for children," says Davis.
Davis says parents need to be vigilant about reading the directions and should always call their pediatrician or health care provider about questions regarding over-the-counter medications.
"Because young children often suffer from cold-like symptoms, more research is needed to test the safety and efficacy of these cough and cold medicines in our littlest patients," Davis says.
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Broadcast-quality video is available on request. See the video here:
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Full report: http://mottnpch.org/reports-surveys/parents-ignore-warning-labels-give-cough-cold-meds-young-kids
Website: Check out the Poll's new website: MottNPCH.org. You can search and browse over 70 NPCH Reports, suggest topics for future polls, share your opinion in a quick poll, and view information on popular topics. The National Poll on Children's Health team welcomes feedback on the new website, including features you'd like to see added. To share feedback, e-mail NPCH@med.umich.edu.
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Purpose/Funding: The C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health based at the Child Health Evaluation and Research Unit at the University of Michigan and funded by the Department of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases and the University of Michigan Health System is designed to measure major health care issues and trends for U.S. children.
Data Source: This report presents findings from a nationally representative household survey conducted exclusively by GfK Custom Research, LLC GfK Custom Research, LLC (GfK), for C.S. Mott Children's Hospital via a method used in many published studies. The survey was administered in January 2013 to a randomly selected, stratified group of parents with a child age 0-3 (n=498) from GfK's web-enabled KnowledgePanel that closely resembles the U.S. population. The sample was subsequently weighted to reflect population figures from the Census Bureau. The survey completion rate was 57 percent among panel members contacted to participate. The margin of error is 8 to 11 percentage points.
Findings from the U-M C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health do not represent the opinions of the investigators or the opinions of the University of Michigan.
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Apr. 19, 2013 ? Yellow vision, pseudo-pulmonary obstruction, involuntary body movements, respiratory paralysis. These are some of the 1,600 known side effects (SEs) produced by drugs. Adverse effects are one of the main causes of hospital admission in the west. These effects are difficult to predict, and in practice specific assays are required to test the safety of agents in pre-clinical phases, thus these effects are often not discovered until the drug has been launched. A study published by scientists at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) seeks to fill this information gap.
The objective of the study is to shed light on the molecular bases of SEs and provide medical chemists with the tools to design safer drugs and to predict their effects. The study collects and proposes molecular hypotheses for 1,162 side effects. This information, which is about to be tested experimentally, is now available to the scientific community through the most recent issue of the specialized journal Chemistry and Biology, part of the Cell group.
The researchers Miquel Duran and Patrick Aloy collated all the drugs that cause each known SE. Next, they studied the proteins with which they interact and their chemical structure. "For most of the side effects we have a biological hypothesis, and for many of these cases we also have chemical information about the drug, which may be useful to predict a specific secondary effect," explains ICREA researcher Patrick Aloy, head of the "Structural Bioinformatics and Network Biology" at IRB Barcelona. Of the 1,162 SEs for which they have found a molecular description, 446 can be explained solely on the basis of biology and 68 only on the basis of chemistry, while for 648 (56%) both biological and chemical considerations are required.
Some examples: Xanthopsia and Buccoglossal Syndrome
One of the SEs described is Buccoglossal Syndrome, a disorder involving involuntary movements of the body and caused by six different drugs. The researchers propose that drugs whose structures include a piperazine ring and, in addition, interact with the receptors 5-HT2A and/or DRD2 are more likely to cause this syndrome. "This is one of the examples where we need a biological and chemical explanation," says Miquel Duran, a chemist doing his PhD in Aloy's lab, and first author of the paper. "Another interesting case is Xanthopsia, a predominance of yellow in the vision, a condition supposedly experienced by Van Gogh," explain the researchers. "In this case we do not suspect any related protein but observe that there are chemical structures that can cause this disorder, which we have annotated in 12 drugs that include this condition as a possible side effect" .
"We are providing the scientific community with lists of proteins and the chemical features associated with SEs. We refer to these as "alerts": they can be used by drug design experts to try to avoid certain interactions and/or structures in order to develop safer drugs," says Aloy.
For these scientists, it is necessary to combine biology and chemistry in order to determine what may be causing a given SE. "In practice, and for each unwanted effect, there is a biological part that we know, but this part does not offer a complete picture of the mechanism and perhaps we will be able to fill this gap by "looking at" the chemical structure," upholds Duran. "The multidisciplinarity provided by IRB Barcelona allows us to start studies with these characteristics, which require the convergence of several fields to achieve a more complete understanding," says Dr. Aloy, an expert in systems biology.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Institute for Research in Biomedicine-IRB.
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Journal Reference:
Miquel Duran-Frigola, Patrick Aloy. Analysis of Chemical and Biological Features Yields Mechanistic Insights into Drug Side Effects. Chemistry & Biology, 2013; 20 (4): 594 DOI: 10.1016/j.chembiol.2013.03.017
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
At 6-foot-1, he isn't an overwhelmingly large light heavyweight. Most of Mousasi's career has been at 205 lbs., but he did win the 2008 DREAM Grand Prix at 185 lbs with a win over Ronaldo "Jacare" Souza in the final.
Mousasi won his UFC debut, but it was hardly memorable. His original opponent, Alexander Gustafsson, was replaced in the last minute by Ilir Latifi, and we found out after the fight Mousasi was dealing with an injury. Perhaps it is the right move.
Do you think Mousasi should drop down to middleweight? Speak up in the comments, on Facebook or on Twitter.
Resurgence of endangered deer in Patagonian 'Eden' highlights conservation success
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
The Huemul, a species of deer found only in the Latin American region of Patagonia, is bouncing back from the brink of possible extinction as a result of collaboration between conservationists and the Chilean government, says a new study.
By controlling cattle farming and policing to prevent poaching in the Bernardo O'Higgins National Park ? a vast "natural Eden" covering 3.5 million hectares ? conservation efforts have allowed the deer to return to areas of natural habitat from which it had completely disappeared.
Researchers are hailing the findings as an example of collaborations between local government and scientists leading to real conservation success, and a possible model for future efforts to maintain the extraordinary biodiversity found in this part of Chile.
The study by researchers from Cambridge, the Wildlife Conservation Society and CONAF, the Chilean national forestry commission, is released today in the journalOryx, published by conservation charity Fauna and Flora International.
A national symbol that features on the Chilean coat-of-arms, Huemul deer are estimated to have suffered reductions of 99 per cent in size since the 19th century, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
Researchers believe 50 per cent of this decline has come in recent years, with only 2,500 deer now left in the wild.
The Huemul is a naturally tame and approachable animal, which led to it becoming easy prey for hunters, particularly with the arrival of European colonists in the area who would hunt Huemul for meat to feed their dogs.
Recent increases by local farmers in the practice of releasing cattle indiscriminately into national parkland for retrieval later in the year has damaged the habitats of endemic wildlife such as the Huemul, and, coupled with continued hunting of the species, deer populations plummeted.
The joint efforts of conservationists and researchers with government and private initiatives created a small number of field stations in this remote natural paradise on the tip of South America ? one of the least populated areas of the world, requiring a boat trip of two days along the region's stunning fjords to reach.
This created a base for monitoring endangered species and natural habitats, as well as a team of park rangers enforcing conservation laws that ? although they had been in place since the late sixties ? had never been policed on the ground.
The impact was almost immediate, within five short years ? from 2004 to 2008 ? the Huemul population in the national park not only stabilised but also began to increase, with deer coming down from the hostile mountain areas it had sought refuge in and back to the sea-level valleys where it naturally thrives.
"National parks are at the heart of modern conservation, but there has to be an investment in management and protection on the ground. You can't just have a 'paper park', where an area is ring-fenced on a map but physically ignored," said Crist?bal Brice?o, a researcher from Cambridge's Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, who co-authored the study.
"Our results suggest that synergistic conservation actions, such as cattle removal and poaching control, brought about by increased infrastructure, can lead to the recovery of species such as the threated Huemul."
For Brice?o, the "scattering" of endangered species as habitats are encroached on creates not only external threats - but also extremely limited mating diversity.
This leads to levels of inbreeding that can reach "a critical extent from which there's no return", causing susceptibility to disease and increased extinction risk, as with another Chilean mammal that Brice?o is researching called Darwin's Fox ? named for the scientific genius that first discovered it ? with barely 500 now left in the world.
The Huemul's success offers encouragement for Brice?o and others in the field: "I think it's beautiful that this has turned out to be an example of real hope for an endangered species, an example we would like to replicate."
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University of Cambridge: http://www.cam.ac.uk
Thanks to University of Cambridge for this article.
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Apr. 17, 2013 ? Do people get caught in the cycle of overeating and drug addiction because their brain reward centers are over-active, causing them to experience greater cravings for food or drugs?
In a unique prospective study Oregon Research Institute (ORI) senior scientist Eric Stice, Ph.D., and colleagues tested this theory, called the reward surfeit model. The results indicated that elevated responsivity of reward regions in the brain increased the risk for future substance use, which has never been tested before prospectively with humans. Paradoxically, results also provide evidence that even a limited history of substance use was related to less responsivity in the reward circuitry, as has been suggested by experiments with animals.
The research appears in the May 1, 2013 issue of Biological Psychiatry.
In a novel study using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) Stice's team tested whether individual differences in reward region responsivity predicted overweight/obesity onset among initially healthy weight adolescents and substance use onset among initially abstinent adolescents. The neural response to food and monetary reward was measured in 162 adolescents. Body fat and substance use were assessed at the time of the fMRI and again one year later.
"The findings are important because this is the first test of whether atypical responsivity of reward circuitry increases risk for substance use," says Dr. Stice. "Although numerous researchers have suggested that reduced responsivity is a vulnerability factor for substance use, this theory was based entirely on cross-sectional studies comparing substance abusing individuals to healthy controls; no studies have tested this thesis with prospective data."
Investigators examined the extent to which reward circuitry (e.g., the striatum) was activated in response to receipt and anticipated receipt of money. Monetary reward is a general reinforcer and has been used frequently to assess reward sensitivity. The team also used another paradigm to assess brain activation in response to the individual's consumption and anticipated consumption of chocolate milkshake. Results showed that greater activation in the striatum during monetary reward receipt at baseline predicted future substance use onset over a 1-year follow-up.
Noteworthy was that adolescents who had already begun using substances showed less striatal response to monetary reward. This finding provides the first evidence that even a relatively short period of moderate substance use might reduce reward region responsivity to a general reinforcer.
"The implications are that the more individuals use psychoactive substances, the less responsive they will be to rewarding experiences, meaning that they may derive less reinforcement from other pursuits, such as interpersonal relationships, hobbies, and school work. This may contribute to the escalating spiral of drug use that characterizes substance use disorders," commented Stice.
Although the investigators had expected parallel neural predictors of future onset of overweight during exposure to receipt and anticipated receipt of a palatable food, no significant effects emerged. It is possible that these effects are weaker and that a longer follow-up period will be necessary to better differentiate who will gain weight and who will remain at a healthy weight.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Oregon Research Institute, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
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Journal Reference:
Eric Stice, Sonja Yokum, Kyle S. Burger. Elevated Reward Region Responsivity Predicts Future Substance Use Onset But Not Overweight/Obesity Onset. Biological Psychiatry, 2013; 73 (9): 869 DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2012.11.019
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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President-elect Nicolas Maduro accused the opposition on Tuesday of planning a coup against him after seven government supporters were killed in violent clashes over his disputed election victory.
Opposition leader Henrique Capriles has demanded a full recount of votes from Sunday's election after official results showed a narrow victory for Maduro, who is late socialist President Hugo Chavez's hand-picked successor.
The deaths happened on Monday when protesters flooded parts of the capital Caracas and cities in the interior, blocking streets, burning tires and fighting with security forces.
They included two people shot by opposition sympathizers while celebrating Maduro's victory in a middle-class area of the capital and one person killed in an attack on a government-run clinic, authorities said.
Officials also said 61 people were injured, including one woman whom protesters tried to burn alive.
Authorities have arrested 135 people.
"This is the responsibility of those who have called for violence, who have ignored the constitution and the institutions," a furious Maduro said in a speech to the nation on Tuesday. "Their plan is a coup d'etat."
The opposition did not respond to specific allegations relating to the deaths, but Capriles has repeatedly called for only peaceful demonstrations and said that the government was responsible for violence by denying its call for an recount.
INSTABILITY
The prospect of prolonged instability in the OPEC nation with the world's largest oil reserves has unnerved markets.
Venezuela's volatile and highly-traded debt has tumbled on the dispute and unrest, with the benchmark 2027 bond off more than 3.0 percent on Tuesday.
A continuation of violent protests, despite Capriles' entreaties, could be damaging for the opposition.
Maduro has played up attacks by rock-throwing protesters on popular government programs such as clinics staffed by Cuban doctors and subsidized state-run supermarkets, saying they prove Capriles wants to scrap Chavez-era social welfare programs.
That accusation was a principal plank of Maduro's campaign.
State TV has played images of burning buildings and masked demonstrators, along with footage of a failed 2002 coup that briefly ousted Chavez but led many Venezuelans to question the opposition's democratic credentials.
Chavez was toppled from power for 48 hours then, but bounced back quickly, purged critics inside the armed forces and stepped up the pace of his socialist policies.
Maduro said he will not allow a big opposition march planned for Wednesday in Caracas to demand a vote recount, which could lead to further clashes if the opposition goes ahead anyway.
"It's time for a firm hand in the face of this fascism and intolerance," he said.
The election was triggered by the death of Chavez last month after a two-year battle with cancer. He named Maduro as his successor before he died and his prot?g? won the election with 50.8 percent of the vote against Capriles' 49.0 percent.
Maduro, who had initially said he was open to a recount, called on his supporters to demonstrate all week. The National Electoral Council (CNE) has refused to conduct a recount.
The electoral authority's results showed him winning by 265,000 votes, but opposition sources said their count showed Capriles had received an additional 300,000 to 400,000 votes that had been unaccounted for in the official tally.
Capriles team said it has evidence of 3,200 irregularities, from voters using fake IDs to intimidation of volunteers at polling centers. It wants an exhaustive review of paper ballots.
"We are not going to ignore the will of the people. We believe we won ... we want this problem resolved peacefully," Capriles told a news conference.
"There is no majority here, there are two halves."
The CNE said an audit of 54 percent of the voting stations, in a widely respected electronic vote system, had already been carried out.
The U.S. State Department, which had previously urged a full audit, questioned the CNE's refusal to accommodate Capriles.
"The CNE's decision to declare Mr. Maduro the victor before completing a full recount is difficult to understand. And they did not explain their haste in taking this decision," said State Department deputy spokesman Patrick Ventell.
OPPOSITION RISKS
Capriles's strategy could backfire if demonstrations turn into prolonged disturbances, such as those the opposition led between 2002 and 2004, which sometimes blocked roads for days with trash and burning tires, annoying many Venezuelans.
Senior government figures have raised the possibility of legal action against Capriles, the governor of Miranda state, for inciting the violence.
Rallies around the country, from supporters of both sides, went ahead on Tuesday largely without any problems.
"We're here because we know we won and there was fraud," said Dairy Garces, 29, at an opposition demonstration of some 3,000 people near the CNE office in the western city of Coro.
"This is a fight for a better future for our children."
A day earlier, demonstrators in an upscale district of Caracas, some wearing T-shirts wrapped around their faces, had thrown sticks and stones at ranks of riot police.
The controversy over Venezuela's first presidential election without Chavez on the ballot in two decades raised doubts about the future of "Chavismo" - the late leader's self-proclaimed socialist movement - without its towering and mercurial founder.
Chavez named Maduro as his heir in an emotional last public speech to the nation before his death, giving the former foreign minister and vice president a huge boost ahead of the vote.
Maduro's slight margin of victory raises the possibility he could face future challenges from within the leftist coalition that united around Chavez, who won four presidential elections.
At his last election in October, the former soldier beat Capriles by 11 percentage points even though his battle against cancer had severely restricted his ability to campaign.
(Additional reporting by Daniel Wallis, Eyanir Chinea, Diego Ore and Girish Gupta in Caracas; Sailu Urribarri in Paraguana; Javier Farias in Tachira; Paul Eckert in Washington; Editing by Kieran Murray, Jackie Frank and Paul Simao)
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Public release date: 22-Apr-2013
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Onetime Strikeforce light heavyweight champion Gegard Mousasi wants your input. He's thinking of dropping down: