Los Angeles
As technology has played a bigger role in our lives, our skills in critical thinking and analysis have declined, while our visual skills have improved, according to new research.
A dietary staple of India, where Alzheimer's disease rates are reportedly among the world's lowest, holds potential as a weapon in the fight against the disease. The new UCLA-Veterans Affairs study involving genetically altered mice suggests that curcumin, the yellow pigment in curry spice, inhibits the accumulation of destructive beta amyloids in the brains of Alzheimer's patients and also breaks up existing plaques.
For the second consecutive year, the ''High Energy Physics'' team of physicists, computer scientists, and network engineers have won the Supercomputing Bandwidth Challenge with a sustained data transfer of 101 gigabits per second (Gbps) between Pittsburgh and Los Angeles. This is more than four times faster than last year's record of 23.2 gigabits per second, which was set by the same team.
Researchers have identified three new chemical risk factors for bladder cancer in a study involving some 600 people in the Los Angeles area. The newly discovered carcinogens are found in cigarette smoke, which is already known to be a major cause of bladder cancer, contributing to at least 50 percent of the approximately 60,000 cases in the United States every year. All three of the new carcinogens, however, were also found to be risk factors for bladder cancer in nonsmokers. Although second-hand smoke is one source of exposure for non-smokers, the researchers say that it is very important to identify the other sources of exposure for nonsmokers.
With a strong enough jolt -- a 7.6 -magnitude earthquake -- the seafloor under Catalina Island could be violently thrust upward, causing a tsunami along the Southern California coast, according to researchers at the University of Southern California. In a pair of journal articles published this month, researchers at the Viterbi School of Engineering described the tsunami hazard associated with offshore faults, including one that lies under Santa Catalina Island, just 25 miles off the Los Angeles coast.
Using previously unavailable census data, a team of geographers has found that residents of one of America's largest metropolitan areas are far less racially and ethnically segregated at work than they are in their home neighborhoods, confirming what social scientists have long suspected but could not verify.
According to a new report, complex cells like those in the human body probably resulted from the fusion of genomes from an ancient bacterium and a simpler microbe, Archaea, best known for its ability to withstand extreme temperatures and hostile environments. The finding provides strong evidence that complex cells arose from combinations of simpler organisms in a symbiotic effort to survive. Scientists refer to both bacteria and Archaea as ''prokaryotes''--a cell type that has no distinct nucleus to contain the genetic material, DNA, and few other specialized components. More-complex cells, known as ''eukaryotes,'' contain a well-defined nucleus as well as compartmentalized ''organelles'' that carry out metabolism and transport molecules throughout the cell.
While nearly three-quarters of Americans believe that the public health system would respond fairly in a bioterrorist event, African-Americans and Asians adhere to this view in smaller proportions, perhaps because of past discriminatory policies put in place by health officials, according to a new UCLA study. The multivariate study, based on a random-digit, population-based telephone survey of Los Angeles County residents, found that 72 percent of respondents overall believe that the public health system would respond fairly in a bioterrorist event.
Proximity to social service providers has never been more critical for poor populations than it is under the current service-oriented welfare system, yet service providers remain located near urban centers with historically high rates of poverty even though many areas outside urban centers have experienced increases in poverty, according to a new report. Today, more than half of all Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) dollars go to the provision of support services, in contrast to the system it replaced in 1996, under which nearly 80 percent of all welfare dollars went to cash assistance for recipients.
Latinos living in the United States have high rates of eye disease and visual impairment, according to a research study, and a significant number may be unaware of their eye disease. This study, called the Los Angeles Latino Eye Study (LALES), is the largest, most comprehensive epidemiological analysis of visual impairment in Latinos conducted in the U.S.
About 40 percent of Los Angeles County residents say they get no more than 10 minutes of continuous physical activity each week, according to a new report.
Women interviewed for the study were almost twice as likely as men to be physically inactive, say Antronette Yancey, M.D., M.P.H., of the UCLA School of Public Health and colleagues. Older and less educated residents, along with those born outside the United States, were also apt to be sedentary.
Surfing the beaches south of Los Angeles can make you sick to your stomach ? literally. According to a UC Irvine study of hundreds of surfers, urban beach water made surfers ill twice as often as did ocean surf in more rural areas. The findings suggest that widespread exposure to urban runoff at beaches in highly populated areas increases health risks to all swimmers, even when pollution levels are within current environmental monitoring guidelines.
Two deaf women in the US have become the first people to undergo the risky procedure of having implants in their brainstems, New Scientist reports.
The devices are designed to restore hearing by directly stimulating nerves. Some deaf people have been given implants that sit just outside the brainstem, but these do not work very well.
Feeding auditory signals directly into the brainstem should work better, but because the brainstem carries signals from the entire body to the brain, any damage caused by an implant could be disastrous.
The procedure is far more risky than, say, placing implants in the cortex to try to restore some vision. "If you damage the cortex it's not that big a deal. But at the brainstem level every neuron you damage could damage function," says Bob Shannon of the House Ear Institute in Los Angeles, the surgeon who pioneered the procedure. "We took 15 years to convince ourselves that this could be done safely."
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The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Energy have formally transferred a shipment of refurbished radiological detection equipment to the Los Angeles Fire Department Hazardous Waste Unit, the Los Angeles Port Authority and the San Francisco Health Department. The equipment, with a replacement value of approximately $60,000, is being provided to these emergency responder agencies under a DHS/DOE pilot project called the Homeland Defense Equipment Reuse (HDER) Program.
In the event of a significant threat to their buildings and facilities, hospitals can successfully evacuate patients and staff without relying on outside assistance, a UC Irvine study found. The study, which appears in the April 3 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, also suggests that in the aftermath of a severely damaging earthquake or similarly devastating terrorist event, the biggest risk to hospitals isn't structural integrity, but non-structural damage like water leaks and electrical outages. The findings include basic steps for responding to a bioterrorist attack on a medical facility.
