A team of researchers, including two at Brown University, show that when people smoked cigarettes with less nicotine, they smoked less, felt less craving, and tried to quit more. Results appear in The New England Journal of Medicine.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Two Brown University researchers are co-authors of a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showing that nicotine content is a significant determinant of cigarette use and dependence.(more…)
Human papillomavirus, or HPV, which can cause cervical cancer in women, is also known to cause anal cancer in both women and men. Now, a study led by researchers at the UCLA School of Nursing has found that older HIV-positive men who have sex with men are at higher risk of becoming infected with the HPVs that most often cause anal cancer.
The researchers also report that smoking increases the risk of infection with specific types of HPV among both HIV-infected and uninfected older men by up to 20 percent. This is the first large U.S. study of a group of HIV-infected and uninfected men between the ages of 40 and 69 who have sex with men. Study participants were examined twice a year for up to 25 years. (more…)
Eating peppers — which are in the same botanical family as tobacco — may reduce the risk of Parkinson’s disease. The findings are reported in the May 9 edition of the Annals of Neurology, a journal of the American Neurological Association and Child Neurology Society.
Nearly one million people in the United States are living with Parkinson’s disease, a neurodegenerative disorder that results from the loss of dopamine-producing brain cells. In early stages, Parkinson’s is characterized by difficulties in controlling movement. Initial symptoms include hand tremors, limb rigidity, and problems walking. As the disease progresses, cognitive problems may develop and advance into dementia. (more…)
The most common form of heart disease affecting humans is the Coronary Artery Disease. The disease portrays acute build-up of cholesterol in the layers of the arteries constituting the heart. The blockage induces a phenomenal slowed down blood circulation. The left auricle functions in generating the signals dubbed as heart beats. As a result of the incrementing inadvertent blockage the muscles keep panting due to the lack of supply of blood to the muscles. Since the blood supply to the muscles are snapped to an instance, the muscles are forced to reciprocate to the bodily functions. The plaques present in the arterial walls of all humans suffice huge pressure in the process which may lead to weakening and thereby a crack in the arterial wall. Again this may concur with unforeseen blood clot in the region. This compromising blood clot, topped with blockage sustaining in the arteries lead to the preponderances of heart attacks. (more…)
ANN ARBOR — National samples of 45,000 to 50,000 students in three grades (8, 10, and 12) have been surveyed every year since 1991 as part of the nationwide Monitoring the Future study. Among the most important findings from this year’s survey of U.S. secondary school students are the following:
Marijuana. After four straight years of increasing use among teens, annual marijuana use showed no further increase in any of the three grades surveyed in 2012. The 2012 annual prevalence rates (i.e., percent using in the prior 12 months) were 11%, 28%, and 36% for 8th, 10th, and 12th graders, respectively. (Among the 8th graders there was a modest decline across the past two years—from 13.7% in 2010 to 11.4% in 2012—that reached statistical significance.) (more…)
A new study finds that relatively early into tobacco addiction, teens experience many of the same negative psychological effects during abstinence as adults do, with a couple of exceptions. The data can inform efforts to improve the efficacy of quitting and withdrawal treatment programs.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Abstinence from smoking seems to affect teens differently than adults in a couple of ways, but a new study provides evidence that most of the psychological difficulties of quitting are as strong for relatively new, young smokers as they are for adults who have been smoking much longer.
“Adolescents are showing — even relatively early in the dependence process — significant, strong, negative effects just after acute abstinence from smoking,” said L. Cinnamon Bidwell, assistant professor (research) in psychiatry and human behavior at the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies. “Our study shows what those specific effects are. We chose a broad array” of factors to study. (more…)
*ARPA-E funded project aims to produce fuel molecules in plant leaves*
Mention biofuels and most people think of corn ethanol. Some may think of advanced biofuels from switchgrass or miscanthus. But tobacco? Not likely.
That could change. A team of scientists led by a researcher from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is exploring a way to produce gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel from the iconic plant of the South. (more…)
*Plant lineages with multiple copies of their genetic information face higher extinction rates than their relatives, researchers report in Science magazine.*
While duplication of hereditary information is a relatively rare event in animal evolution, it is common in plants. Potatoes, coffee, bananas, peanuts, tobacco, wheat, oats and strawberries, to name but a few, all carry multiple copies of their genetic material, in a condition called polyploidy.
In contrast, most animals including humans are diploid, meaning an individual carries only two copies of each chromosome, the carriers of genetic information, one from each parent. (more…)
