American Journal of Public Health study claims the declining teenage pregnancy rate in the US is down to better use of contraception rather than young people abstaining from sex.
The December 2006 issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association contains articles and research studies you may find of interest. Below is a summary of some of this month’s articles.
One research paper and several review papers will appear in the December issue of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. The research study explores Coho salmon dependence on intermittent streams in light of Supreme Court cases, while one of the reviews focuses on the management and biodiversity of sacred groves.
An international team of scientists is calling for a targeted global conservation effort to preserve seagrasses and their ecological services for the world’s coastal ecosystems, according to an article published in the December issue of Bioscience. The article “A Global Crisis for Seagrass Ecosystems” cites the critical role seagrasses play in coastal systems and how costal development, population growth and the resulting increase of nutrient and sediment pollution have contributed to large-scale losses worldwide.
Children with a form of bedwetting that does not respond to a common medication have more sodium and urea in their nighttime urine, possibly because of an imbalance of prostaglandin, a hormone-like substance, a new study has found.
Guanfacine, a medication commonly prescribed to alleviate symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, is no more effective than a placebo, according to a study led by researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center.
Women who undertake a long-term weight training program produce more biologically active growth hormone, a finding that allows physiologists to understand why weight training improves muscle tone and optimizes metabolic function. The study found that growth hormone was responsive to moderate and heavy exercise regimens having 3-12 repetitions with varying weight loading, suggesting women need to have heavy loading cycle or workout in their resistance training routines, as it helps to build muscle and bone.
A new study analyzing the economic implications of the Clinical Antipsychotic Trials of Intervention Effectiveness (CATIE) concludes that the older (first generation) antipsychotic medication perphenazine was less expensive and no less effective than the newer (second generation) medications used in the trial during initial treatment, suggesting that older antipsychotics still have a role in treating schizophrenia.
A new study shows how psychological stress induces abnormalities in skin structure and function that could initiate or worsen skin disorders such as psoriasis and atopic dermatitis. The study provides a link for understanding the roles psychological stress and glucocorticoid, a type of steroid, play in skin disorders and shows that blocking glucocorticoid can prevent skin abnormalities induced by psychological stress.
An article by John Vandermeer of the University of Michigan shows how extensions of established theory can model coupled oscillations resulting from interactions such as predation and competition. Such coupling can have far-reaching effects that may explain the higher-than-expected diversity of plankton in aquatic ecosystems and other paradoxes of species distribution.