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Industry Impact of Chemical Controls
The workshop, "Innovation and Competitiveness: A Strategic Approach to Emerging Chemical Issues," will be held on Sept. 26-27 at the NIST laboratories in Gaithersburg, Md. The costs of dealing with multiple chemical regulation and control requirements in different markets goes far beyond the chemical industry itself. Chemicals and chemical products contribute 16 percent of the value of material inputs in the automotive sector, 33 percent of the value of material inputs used to make semiconductors, and 30 percent of the value of medical supplies, for example. The European Union's "End-of-Life-Vehicles" (ELV) Directive affected thousands of U.S. automotive suppliers. A study conducted by the Original Equipment Suppliers Association (OESA) observed that the average cost for inputting data into the International Material Data System (IMDS), a tool for complying with the ELV requirements, was $75 per simple raw material and up to $2,500 per complex assembly. In 2002, an Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) project team used these data and estimated that total costs to the entire U.S. supply chain for ELV compliance would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars......... Posted by: Sarah Permalink Source Exposure Of Youth To Images Of Tobacco Use
Tobacco advertising was banned from television in 1971, but tobacco use is still portrayed in a variety of forms on television, including movie advertisements or trailers. "Trailers pair tobacco use with popular movie stars and edgy action shots," the authors write. "These images translate into positive images of tobacco that are conveyed to a broad audience, including a large population younger than 18 years." Studies have shown that most movies released in the United States contain images of smoking, including about half of those with PG or G ratings, according to background information in the article. Surveys of children and adolescents indicate that they are more likely to smoke if their favorite movie stars do, and that watching movies in which characters smoke can have an immediate effect on their attitudes toward smoking. Cheryl G. Healton, Dr.P.H., American Legacy Foundation, Washington, D.C., and colleagues studied all 216 movie trailers that aired in the United States from August 2001 through July 2002. They first analyzed the full-length versions of all the trailers to determine whether they included images of tobacco use. They then obtained viewer information from Nielson Media Research, the primary source of U.S. television ratings, to determine the population exposed to each trailer......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Source Drazner To Lead Heart Program
Dr. Drazner, associate professor of internal medicine at UT Southwestern, has been a key member of the heart transplant team for nine years, specializing in treating patients with congestive heart failure and caring for patients before and after transplantation. He also has been instrumental in achieving UT Southwestern's tremendous survival rates for heart-transplant patients, which consistently rank in the top 10 in the nation and are the best in Texas. Dr. Drazner succeeds Dr. Clyde Yancy, who served as medical director since 1993. The Heart Failure and Cardiac Transplantation program is a key component of UT Southwestern's Heart, Lung and Vascular Center, a collaborative effort between UT Southwestern faculty and community physicians who unite to bring their clinical and surgical expertise to patients needing cardiac, pulmonary or vascular care. "Dr. Drazner is a talented, compassionate and highly skilled clinician," said Dr. John Warner, assistant professor of internal medicine, director of the Heart, Lung and Vascular Center. "He has been an integral part of our team for almost a decade now and we are extremely pleased that he has accepted this position. We look forward to his leadership"......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Source More Research Needed To Combat Killer Diseases
The report (The New Landscape of Neglected Disease Drug Development) by Mary Moran and colleagues at the Pharmaceutical Research and Development Policy Group, The George Institute, argues that drugs for neglected diseases are increasingly being developed partly due to the use of public-private partnership (PPPs) mechanisms that spread the financial and organisational risk of product development. Anne-Laure Ropars, from the George Institute will be discussing the rise of drug development for neglected diseases and the role of PPPs at a major international conference, organised by the ESRC Innogen Centre to be held in London on 5-6 September 2006. Steven Matlin, Executive Director of the Global Forum for Health Research, also speaking at the conference, does not believe that the increases in development of health products for neglected diseases (drugs, vaccines and diagnostics) is simply due to the rise of PPPs. Matlin also stresses the rise of a group of 'innovating developing countries' (IDCs) including Brazil, China, India and South Africa. He argues that these countries have "growing national capacity for high-quality manufacturing to convert the inventions into health products for both domestic and international markets"......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Source Nutritional Value Of Salad
A new UCLA/Louisiana State University study of dietary data on more than 17,500 men and women finds consumption of salad and raw vegetables correlates with higher concentrations of folic acid, vitamins C and E, lycopene and alpha and beta carotene in the bloodstream. Published in the September edition of the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Dietetic Association, the study also suggests that each serving of salad consumed correlates with a 165 percent higher likelihood of meeting recommended dietary allowances (RDA) for vitamin C in women and 119 percent greater likelihood in men. The study is the first to examine the relationship between normal salad consumption and nutrient levels in the bloodstream, and also the first to examine the dietary adequacy of salad consumption using the latest nutritional guidelines of the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences. The findings blunt concerns about the human body's ability to absorb nutrients from raw vegetables, as well as concern that the structure and characteristics of some plants undercut nutritional value. "The consistently higher levels of certain nutrients in the bloodstream of salad-eaters suggest these important components of a healthy diet are being well-absorbed from salad," said Lenore Arab, visiting professor of epidemiology at the UCLA School of Public Health and co-author of the study with L. Joseph Su, assistant professor at the LSU School of Public Health......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Source Thinking Of Stroke
Does motor lateralization have implications for stroke rehabilitation? pg. 311. This article describes current findings on the usefulness of dominance retraining strategies in poststroke patients with dominant-arm hemiplegia. We found consistent differences in control strategies used by both the dominant and nondominant hemisphere/limb systems. However, the nondominant arm may not spontaneously become an efficient dominant manipulator, indicated by persistent deficits in chronic stroke patients. Because ipsilesional deficits are commonly mild compared with contralesional, they are not normally addressed in rehabilitation. We propose that the previously nondominant limb impeded by motor deficits could benefit from remedial treatment to help switch to a dominant controller......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Juices Reduces Alzheimer's Risk
The study by Qi Dai, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of Medicine, and colleagues appears in the recent issue of The American Journal of Medicine. The researchers followed a subset of subjects from a large cross-cultural study of dementia, called the Ni-Hon-Sea Project, which investigated Alzheimers disease and vascular dementia in older Japanese populations living in Japan, Hawaii and Seattle, Wash. For the current study, called the Kame Project, the researchers identified 1,836 dementia-free subjects in the Seattle population and collected information on their dietary consumption of fruit and vegetable juices. They then assessed cognitive function every two years for up to 10 years. After controlling for possible confounding factors like smoking, education, physical activity and fat intake, the researchers found that those who reported drinking juices three or more times per week were 76 percent less likely to develop signs of Alzheimers disease than those who drank less than one serving per week......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Source Alcohol Exposure Brain Link
These researchers also confirmed the involvement of additional proteins previously suggested as targets of alcohol toxicity, and observed abnormal behavior in the fish resulting from chronic alcohol exposure. These results are published in the online edition of the European Journal of Pharmacology. Researchers have found that five proteins are overexpressed and three were underexpressed. These proteins are thought to be involved in critical mechanisms such as programmed cell death, cholesterol balance, amino acid metabolism, oxidative stress and signal transduction. "Identification of proteins that show selective changes in abundance after alcohol exposure has the potential to unlock new pathways both for understanding the mechanisms of alcoholism and alcohol toxicity, as well as its amelioration," said Richard A. Rabin, Ph.D., professor in the UB Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology and senior author on the study. Senthilkumar Damodaran, doctoral student in pharmacology, is first author. The study involved 16 long-fin striped zebrafish, in two trials of eight each, which were placed as a group in a tank with ethyl alcohol for four weeks. Rabin said the researchers chose zebrafish because they are easy to breed and maintain, their DNA sequences are similar to that of humans and they are sensitive to alcohol concentrations......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Source How Cancer Drug Aids An Anti-cancer Virus
The virus, a modified herpes simplex virus, is injected directly into the tumor, where it enters only the cancer cells and kills them. The study found, however, that within hours of the injection, infection-fighting immune cells are drawn into the tumor to attack the virus, reducing the therapy's effectiveness. They also observed that a chemotherapeutic drug called cyclophosphamide briefly weakens those immune cells, giving the anti-cancer virus an opportunity to spread more completely through the tumor and kill more cancer cells. Specifically, the drug slows the activity of immune cells called natural killer (NK) cells and macrophages, which are the body's first line of defense against infections. The virus and drug cannot be used yet in humans because they require further study, as well as testing for safety and effectiveness through the clinical trials process. The research, led by researchers with the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute, is reported in the Aug. 22 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Source Dogs And Smog Don't Mix
In "Dog Ownership Enhances Symptomatic Responses to Air Pollution in Children with Asthma," researchers looked at the relationship between chronic cough, phlegm production or bronchitis and dog and cat ownership among 475 southern California children with asthma who participated in the Children's Health Study, a longitudinal study of air pollution and respiratory health. Children with dogs had significantly increased cough, phlegm production and bronchitis responses to the measured pollutants, including nitrogen dioxide, ozone, particulate matter and acid vapor. There were no increases of these symptoms in children who lived in homes without pets or who lived with only cats. "Further work is needed to determine what it is about dogs that may increase an asthmatic child's response to air pollution," says Rob McConnell, M.D., professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and lead author of the study......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Source |
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