People with untreated obstructive sleep apnea have altered cardiovascular responses during recovery from maximal exercise. These results suggest an imbalance in the autonomic control of heart rate during recovery, and may be an early clinical sign of the progression of OSA.
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Zolpidem extended-release 12.5 mg, taken three to seven nights per week for up to six months, provided sustained and significant improvements in sleep onset and maintenance, and also improved next-day concentration and morning sleepiness in people with insomnia.
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Tonsillectomies to treat chronic and recurrent tonsillitis substantially improve a patient’s quality of live in both children and adults, according to two new studies. Tonsillectomy remains one of the most common procedures performed on children each year, and while the number of incidences in adults is lower, it is still a routine operation.
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Phantom noises, that mimic ringing in the ears associated with tinnitus, can be experienced by people with normal hearing in quiet situations, according to new research. Tinnitus, an auditory perception that cannot be attributed to an external source, affects at least 36 million Americans on some level, with at least seven million experiencing it so severely that it interferes with daily activities.
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Analyzing the origins of jade used in ancient jewelery has revealed a trading arena that was active for more than 3,000 years and sprawled over 3,000km in Southeast Asia — possibly the largest such network discovered in the region to date. Archaeologists used electron probe microanalysis to examine jade earrings excavated from sites all over Southeast Asia, and were able to pinpoint the origin of the precious stone to a source in Taiwan.
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“Ritual punishment using barbed death spears was witnessed at European contact in the Sydney region,” one of the researchers said. “The Narrabeen man provides early archaeological evidence for ritual or payback killing by spearing. The timing of this event is significant for understanding other archaeological indicators of increased social complexity across south-eastern Australia.”
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Ancient armored fish fossils from Australia present some of the first definite fossil evidence of a forerunner to the human eye. Researchers analyzed the fossilized remains of 400-million-year-old Devonian placoderms — jawed ancestors of modern fish whose bodies were protected by thick bony armor. Palaeobiologists discovered that unlike all living vertebrate animals — which includes everything from the jawless lamprey fish to humans — placoderms had a different arrangement of muscles and nerves supporting the eyeball — evidence of an “intermediate stage” between the evolution of jawless and jawed vertebrates.
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A person’s home may be their castle and in the world of the fiddler crabs having the home advantage makes it a near certainty that you’ll win a battle against an intruder — regardless of your opponent’s size. Biologists set out to discover why male fiddler crabs have an ‘owner advantage’ when defending their burrow that equates to a 92 per cent success rate.
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Israeli investigators have found that Ashkenazi Jewish women with ovarian cancer who have mutations in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes lived significantly longer than Ashkenazi Jewish ovarian cancer patients without these mutations. After up to nine years of follow-up, BRCA1/2 mutation carriers were 28 percent less likely to die from the disease, even though women with the BRCA mutations are significantly more likely to develop ovarian and breast cancers.
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A particular gene variation appears to significantly increase the risk that individuals with cirrhosis of the liver will go on to develop hepatocellular carcinoma, a liver tumor that is the third leading cause of cancer death. Researchers have found that a single alteration in the epidermal growth factor gene may greatly increase the risk that cirrhotic patients will develop the tumor. The growth factor pathway may be target for preventive treatment.
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