Doctors make people nervous. Most people don't go unless something is wrong so they are already anxious. Thus, it is no surprise doctors routinely record blood pressure levels that are significantly higher than levels recorded by nurses, according to a a systematic review led by the University of Exeter Medical School.

The results show that that recordings taken by doctors are significantly higher (by 7/4mmHg) than when the same patients are tested by nurses.

Genghis Khan is famous in evolution because a giant chunk of the world carries is DNA. A recent story of brown bears shows that males roam much greater distances than females, and mating is part of the agenda. 

Researchers from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine say occasional use of stimulant drugs, such as cocaine and amphetamines, and prescription drugs such as Adderall have shown up as impaired neuronal activity in the parts of the brain associated with anticipatory functioning among 18- to 24-year-old users.

Among the study's main implications is the possibility of being able to use brain activity patterns as a means of identifying at-risk youth long before they have any obvious outward signs of addictive behaviors.

It's hard to find an article on food or metabolism that doesn't imply it has implications for predicting cardiovascular disease (CVD) or diabetes.
Because higher glucose levels have been associated with higher CVD incidence, it has been proposed that information on blood sugar control might improve doctors' ability to predict who will develop CVD, according to background information in the article.

But an analysis of nearly 300,000 adults without a known history of diabetes or cardiovascular disease showed adding information about glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), a measure of longer-term blood sugar control, to conventional CVD risk factors like smoking and cholesterol didn't do much to predict CVD risk.

Phoenix — Guinea pigs and mice can be replaced with a non-animal skin sensitization method that uses a human-derived skin model, according to a study presented today by the PETA International Science Consortium, Ltd., at the Society of Toxicology's annual meeting.

Recent results show that Cyprotex's in vitro skin sensitization assay SenCeeTox® can correctly identify chemicals that cause an allergic response in humans and, unlike many other methods, can predict the potency of the response. This non-animal method uses a three-dimensional, human-derived skin model that accurately replicates many of the key traits of normal human skin, allowing it to be used to test finished products such as gels and creams.

WOODS HOLE, Mass.—While probing how organisms sense gravity and acceleration, scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) and the University of Utah uncovered evidence that acid (proton concentration) plays a key role in communication between neurons. The surprising discovery is reported this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.