In the hard-hitting world of American football, injuries are an inherent risk of the game with players in the National Football League (NFL) experiencing a higher rate of injury than in any other professional sport. Orthopaedic surgeries are often required to manage player injuries, but until recently little information was available to assess the effect these procedures may have on players' future performance and career trajectory. To better understand surgery's impact, Northwestern Medicine researchers created the NFL Orthopaedic Surgery Outcomes Database (NO-SOD), a comprehensive injury database that compares return-to-play rates (RTP) and performance-based outcomes in NFL players who had orthopaedic surgery.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- A team of researchers, including several from the University of California, Riverside, have found that flowers are a hot spot of transmission of bacteria that end up in the microbiome of wild bees.

The research, which was just published in the journal Microbial Ecology, shows for the first time that multiple flower and wild bee species share several of the same types of bacteria. Bees therefore obtain both food and bacteria from flowers. These bacteria may play important roles in bee health.

A recent review on head lice treatments available in the United States described a marked decline in the effectiveness of permethrin/synergized pyrethrins (collectively pyrethroids), likely due to resistance arising from widespread and indiscriminate use over 30 years.

The review also noted that the potential toxicity of lindane, and the availability of safer and more effective alternatives, should limit its use. Prescription products that are safe and effective include malathion, benzyl alcohol, spinosad, and topical ivermectin.

Home remedies such as petroleum jelly, mayonnaise, and essential oils, have not been demonstrated as safe or effective and may cause adverse reactions.

With the high level of attention to bisphenol A (BPA) over the years, it’s easy to get the impression that BPA is everywhere and we’re constantly being exposed to high and harmful levels in our daily lives.  You might even have seen BPA referred to as an “everywhere chemical.”   

People with the most common type of lung cancer whose disease has spread to the brain could be spared potentially harmful whole brain radiotherapy, according to new research published in The Lancet. The phase 3 randomized trial found that whole brain radiotherapy had no beneficial effect on length or quality of survival over treatment with steroids and other supportive care.

Despite its widespread use, until now there has been no robust evidence to determine whether whole brain radiotherapy, which can have substantial side effects (eg, fatigue, nausea, neurotoxicity), is better than best supportive care alone in terms of prolonging life or improving quality of life.

A small study presented at the European Respiratory Society International Congress found what you likely knew, if you are old enough to remember when smoking was common; smoking made people thinner.

But the paper says people don't gain weight after while quitting because of oral smoking habits being replaced by eating ones, they speculate about an effect on levels of the hormone ghrelin (also known as the hunger hormone). 

Traditional efficacy trials have limited relevance to everyday clinical practice and should be changed, according the authors of a new study into chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) treatments. The report in the New England Journal of Medicine details a new method of testing effectiveness of drugs which puts the patients' clinical experience at the heart of the process.

Human longevity has been previously linked by researchers to genetic factors, calorie restriction, and certain life-style factors such as physical activity or the Mediterranean diet. Now, Italian researchers from La Sapienza University in Rome have identified an additional factor, which significantly contributes to a longer life. In a pilot study on some of the oldest people of the world, they discovered that the perfusion of organs and muscles of the centenarians was as efficient as that in people who were 30 years younger. Results of the CIAO (Cilento Intitiative on Aging Outcome) pilot study, presented today in the Italian town of Pollica, suggest that low blood levels of the peptide hormone Adrenomedullin (bio-ADM) are an indicator for such a good microcirculation.

Gino Bolla was an Italian scientist and the head of the Silicon Detector Facility at Fermilab. And he was a friend and a colleague. He died yesterday in a home accident. Below I remember him by recalling some good times together. Read at your own risk. 

Dear Gino,

   news of your accident reach me as I am about to board a flight in Athens, headed back home after a conference in Greece. Like all unfiltered, free media, Facebook can be quite cruel as a means of delivering this kind of information, goddamnit.

“Never put anything smaller than your elbow into your ear” is something we’ve been wisely cautioned against at some stage or another. But more of us are ignoring this advice.

We use in-the-ear-headphones to listen to music, car keys and hair pins to scratch that particularly unpleasant itch, and hearing aids to enable better communication.

Many of us also use disposable foam earplugs to protect from damaging noises in the workplace, or to block the noise of snoring partners, loud traffic outside bedroom windows, dogs barking and any other bothersome sounds that prevent a good night’s sleep.