* A connection between stres and Al...

* A connection between stres and Alzheimer's disease? As reported in The modern York Times, researchers surveyed 800 priests, nun and monk (average age: 75 years) in the Religious Orders cogitation on their "distress proneness" (i.e., to what degree likely it was that reactions to stres would eventuate in gloom or anxiety, a trait seasoned "neuroticism"). Memory and mental tasks also were measured. Earlier research had shown that chronic stres undermines the function of a part of the brain that supervises memory. The study participants were reexamined an average of five years after the overlook and testing. By that time, 140 participants had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Those who scored the highest forward the neuroticism test were twice as likely to have expanded Alzheimer's disease as those who scored the lowest. Higher exhibition scores also were associated with faster rates of cognitive decline, unruffled in those who had not cause to growed Alzheimer's disease. The researchers described the participants with the lowest scores as "secure hardy, and generally relaxed."

* aye think about holding group prenatal care sessions? A prospective, matched cohort investigation published in Obstetrics & Gynecology set up that birth weight was higher in the infants born to women who attended assemblage prenatal care sessions than in the infants born to women who received individual prenatal care. Birth weight also was higher in preterm infants born to the women who were given cluster prenatal care. The study participants were chiefly black and Hispanic women of cheap socioeconomic status. The authors of the close attention note that group prenatal care allows more time for physicians to address clinical, psychologic, social, and behavior factors that are important to a healthy pregnancy.

* Dieting may do more harm than convenient in young persons, according to a contemplation published in Pediatrics. The prospective reflection tracked 14,972 nine- to 14-year-old children for three years. The children who reported dieting during this period gained more weight than those who did not. Compared with nondieters, the dieters reported more binge eating, higher carbohydrate intake, and more exercise hours by week. The researchers speculate that dieting could reset the metabolism from one side of to the other time (resulting in weight maintenance or gain) or that conflicts of overeating or binge eating between periods of restricted eating could end in weight gain. The researchers move that children who are affaired about their weight should consider making small changes that they can maintain, like as increasing physical activity and decreasing fat intake.

* Ah, the power of drowse A study published in Nature demonstrated that doze facilitates the generalization of information learned during the day. Three disposes of young adults (mean age: 203 years) were assessed for their understanding of synthetic articulate utterance after periods of testing and training with or without a period of slumber The first group received pretesting and training at 9 a.m., with retesting at 9 pm; the next to the first group was pretested and trained at 9 pm then retest after a 12-hour period that included sleep; a mastery group received pretesting, training, and retesting within a single session. Because different words were used in pretesting, training, and post-testing, improved performance portrayed improved generalization. Study participants understood more words after a night's be dead than participants who were experimented 12 hours after the training on the contrary without a sleep period. The researchers noted that be motionless consolidates and restores memories.

* Annual Pap proofs may not be necessary. According to a cogitation published in the New England Journal of Medicine, it is safe for principally women to switch from annual Papanicolaou (Pap) touchstones to one test every three years. Using a Markov standard to estimate the rate at which dysplasia progresse to cancer, the investigators tracked the Pap example results of 31,728 women aged 30 to 64 years who had had three or more consecutive negative examples Among these women, 0.028 percent had grade-2 cervical intraepithelial neoplasia, 0019 had grade-3 cervical intraepithelial neoplasia, and none had invasive cervical cancer.

* Silver may be the safest color for a car, according to a population-based, case-control studious mood published in BMJ. The close attention of more than 1,000 drivers in the Auckland, recent Zealand, area found that silver cars were about 50 percent les likely to be involved in a crash resulting in serious injury than were white cars (previous research had refer toed that white and light-colored cars were the safest vehicles). The risk of serious injury also was significantly greater with golden gray, red, blue, brown, black, and fresh cars compared with silver cars. In their analysis, the researchers considered factors that could affect the subject of attention results, such as driver age, seatbelt use, vehicle age, and driving conditions.

* What calms babies during injections? A little TLC give an inkling ofs a randomized controlled trial of 116 infants that was published in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine. In the investigation infants who were held by the agency of a parent, given a bottle of sugar water (10 mL of 25 percent sucrose) pair minutes before their two-month injections, and allowed to draw into the mouth on a pacifier or formula bottle during and after the immunizations cried significantly les than infants who were placed forward an examination table and given no comfort measures. Not surprisingly, parents of the infants who received comfort measures said they would pick that approach for their children's to come immunizations.