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Safety tips to avoid cooking injuries on Thanksgiving Day

More than 141 serious fires and hot-oil burns have been reported from the use of turkey fryers over the past decade, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. And no one knows that better than Serafino Alfe. The 87-year-old Mount Prospect resident made national news last year when he wound up at the Loyola Burn Center with third-degree burns - the worst type of burn- on his leg. "I tripped and fell right into the deep fryer and basically fried myself," said the volunteer who was deep-frying turkeys at a charity fundraiser.

21 Nov 2012

UNC expert to talk about gratitude research at SPSP annual meeting, Jan. 17-19

Sara Algoe of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill who has investigated how gratitude benefits close relationships, including how expressing gratitude leads to long-term social outcomes for women with metastatic breast cancer and the evolutionary role for gratitude. She will be presenting some of this work at the SPSP annual meeting in New Orleans (Jan. 17-19, 2013), and she is a recipient of grant funding through the Expanding the Science and Practice of Gratitude project.

21 Nov 2012

High blood levels of vitamin D may protect mothers more than babies against MS

High blood levels of Vitamin D may protect mothers more than babies against multiple sclerosis (MS), Umeå University researcher Jonatan Salzer concludes in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

21 Nov 2012

Roundup: Larger-than-expected Medicaid enrollment in Conn.; Texas bill renews rural abortion debate; Calif. details exchange self-sufficiency

Ron Harney is still looking for work after being laid off from his marketing firm job three years ago. He's used up nearly all of his savings and says he's grateful for the state's Medicaid program, which covers the medical care he needs to manage his HIV.

20 Nov 2012

No advantage of continuous over bolus doxorubicin in ALL children

Research suggests that there is no long-term advantage, in terms of cardioprotection or event-free survival, from giving continuous instead of bolus doxorubicin infusion in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

20 Nov 2012

Psychiatric disorders reduce patient fecundity, especially in men

Findings published in the Archives of General Psychiatry show that patients with schizophrenia, autism, and anorexia nervosa have significantly fewer children compared with the general population, suggesting these conditions are under strong selection to be removed from the population.

20 Nov 2012

Generic scale compares manual ability across diagnoses

Researchers have developed a generic manual ability scale unbiased by diagnosis that could allow quantitative comparisons of manual ability between diagnostic groups.

20 Nov 2012

More to fetal alcohol exposure than previously thought

Children who have certain variants in alcohol metabolizing genes and whose mothers drank while pregnant may have a lower IQ than those whose mothers did not drink during pregnancy, researchers report.

20 Nov 2012

Pediatric TB under-diagnosed, treated, MSF report says

According to a new report released by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) at the Union World Conference on Lung Health in Kuala Lumpur, many tuberculosis (TB) programs "under-diagnose, under-treat or completely leave children with TB out, despite the increase in pediatric TB, and rising numbers of children who are infected with drug-resistant forms of TB strains," PlusNews reports.

20 Nov 2012

Washington Post examines polio eradication efforts in Pakistan

The Washington Post reports on polio eradication efforts in Pakistan, writing, "[O]verall trends in Pakistan, where nearly 30 million children have been vaccinated in recent years, are encouraging."

20 Nov 2012

Maternal cigarette smoking reduces reading accuracy in children

Yale School of Medicine researchers have found that children born to mothers who smoked more than one pack per day during pregnancy struggled on tests designed to measure how accurately a child reads aloud and comprehends what they read.

20 Nov 2012

Most African countries not on track to achieve MDGs, U.N. officials say

"Most African countries are lagging behind in achieving the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals [MDGs] and will not make as much progress in health, nutrition and sanitation as had hoped, U.N. officials said" on Thursday, the Associated Press/ABC News reports.

20 Nov 2012

Scientists identify two genetic risk factors for sagittal craniosynostosis

Seattle Children's Research Institute, together with an international team of scientists and clinicians from 22 other institutions, have identified two genetic risk factors for the most common form of non-syndromic craniosynostosis, a birth defect in which the bony plates of an infant's skull prematurely fuse. The condition is known as sagittal craniosynostosis and often results in an abnormal head shape and facial features.

20 Nov 2012

Global development partners meet in Washington to discuss NTD control efforts

"'Hundreds of millions of children and adults in Africa live at risk of disfigurement, impaired development, blindness, and even death from seven major preventable so-called neglected tropical diseases [NTDs], including river blindness, elephantiasis, trachoma, and various types of intestinal parasites,' said World Bank President Jim Yong Kim at the opening of a November 16-18 conference in Washington D.C.: Uniting to Combat NTDs: Translating the London Declaration into Action," the World Bank reports in an article on its webpage.

20 Nov 2012

Study reveals possible reasons why low status children grow up to become smokers

A new study from Sweden reveals that having low peer status in adolescence is a strong risk factor for regular and heavy smoking in adulthood. Researchers from Stockholm University in Sweden used a large database that followed the lives of more than 15,000 Swedes, mainly from the Stockholm area, from birth to middle age.

20 Nov 2012

Researchers discover new cause of hydrocephalus

Researchers at the University of Iowa have discovered a new cause of hydrocephalus, a devastating neurological disorder that affects between one and three of every 1,000 babies born. Working in mice, the researchers identified a cell signaling defect, which disrupts immature brain cells involved in normal brain development.

20 Nov 2012

Music therapy can be beneficial to patients before and after surgical procedures

A new study review published by the University of Kentucky found that music therapy can be beneficial to patients before, during and after a surgical procedure and may reduce pain and recovery time.

20 Nov 2012

Gifts That Give announces partnership with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

Gifts That Give, Inc., the popular social commerce site with a strong charitable mission, announced its inaugural partnership with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital by joining the St. Jude Thanks and Giving campaign.

20 Nov 2012

Public supports updating federal laws that require internet safety standards to protect kids

The Internet is full of information, but also full of real risks for children, like online predators or the pitfalls of losing privacy when kids share too much information. In a new University of Michigan poll, the majority of the public supports updating federal laws that require Internet safety standards to protect kids.

20 Nov 2012

Boston and Cincinnati Children's Hospital to learn more about how autism develops

A network of five leading medical centers, led by Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and Boston Children's Hospital, has received a five-year, $12.5 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to learn more about how autism develops.

20 Nov 2012