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Published12 hours agoSharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Spanish governmentSpain’s equality ministry has launched a summer campaign to encourage women worried about how their body looks to go to the beach.”Summer is ours too,” runs the slogan above an image of five diverse women of different shapes and sizes.”All bodies are beach bodies,” said Social Services Minister Ione Belarra.Women’s Institute head Antonia Morillas said physical expectations affected not only women’s self-esteem, but denied them their rights.The campaign illustration of five women relaxing on the beach also features a topless woman after a mastectomy.The institute, which is behind the initiative, said it was an attempt to show that all bodies had validity.Women should enjoy the summer, however, wherever and with whoever they wished, said the ad: “Today we toast a summer for all, without stereotypes and aesthetic violence against our bodies.”But not everyone was impressed by the campaign. Some wondered if it should be widened to include men without so-called standard bodies, while left-wing leader Cayo Lara said the campaign was the height of absurdity, trying to “create a problem where it doesn’t exist”. Junior equality minister Ángela Rodríguez Pam posted a message on Twitter to men who believed women did not need the ministry’s permission to go to the beach: “Of course we go, but we’re assuming we’ll attract hatred for showing a body that isn’t standard.”You may also be interested inPoor body image harms half of men’s mental healthThe Range pulls bikini and bride weight loss itemsThis video can not be playedTo play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.More on this storySpanish women call for gender equality8 March 2018Bangladesh scraps women-only beach after outcry31 December 2021

Physical and mental activities, such as household chores, exercise, and visiting with family and friends, may help lower the risk of dementia, according to a new study published in the July 27, 2022, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study looked at the effects of these activities, as well as mental activities and use of electronic devices in people both with and without higher genetic risk for dementia.
“Many studies have identified potential risk factors for dementia, but we wanted to know more about a wide variety of lifestyle habits and their potential role in the prevention of dementia,” said study author Huan Song, MD, PhD, of Sichuan University in Chengdu, China. “Our study found that exercise, household chores, and social visits were linked to a reduced risk of various types of dementia.”
The study involved 501,376 people from a UK database without dementia with an average age of 56.
Participants filled out questionnaires at the beginning of the study, including one on physical activities. They were asked how often they participated in activities such as climbing a flight of stairs, walking, and participating in strenuous sports. They were also asked about household chores, job-related activities, and what kind of transportation they used, including walking or biking to work.
Participants completed another questionnaire on mental activities. They were asked about their education level, whether they attend adult education classes, how often they visit with friends and family, visit pubs or social clubs or religious groups, and how often they use electronic devices such as playing computer games, watching TV, and talking on the phone.
Additionally, participants reported whether they had any immediate family members with dementia. This helped researchers determine if they had a genetic risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Study participants were followed an average of 11 years. At the end of the study, 5,185 people had developed dementia.
After adjusting for multiple factors such as age, income, and smoking, researchers found that most physical and mental activities studied showed links to the risk of dementia. Importantly, the findings remain after considering the high correlations and interactions of these activities. People who were highly engaged in activity patterns including frequent exercises, household chores, and daily visits of family and friends had 35%, 21%, and 15% lower risk of dementia, respectively, compared to people who were the least engaged in these activity patterns.
Researchers also looked at dementia incidence rates by identified activity patterns. The rate in people who exercised frequently was 0.45 cases for every 1,000 person-years compared to 1.59 for people who rarely exercised. Person-years take into account the number of people in a study as well as the amount of time spent in the study. Those who frequently did household chores had a rate of 0.86 cases for every 1,000 person-years compared to 1.02 for people who rarely did household chores. People who visited family daily had a rate of 0.62 cases for every 1,000 person-years compared to 0.8 cases for those who only visited friends and family once every few months.
“Our study has found that by engaging more frequently in healthy physical and mental activities people may reduce their risk of dementia,” Song said. “More research is needed to confirm our findings. However, our results are encouraging that making these simple lifestyle changes may be beneficial.”
The researchers found that all participants benefited from the protective effect of physical and mental activities, whether or not they had a family history of dementia.
A limitation of the study was that people reported their own physical and mental activity, so they may not have remembered and reported these activities correctly.
The study was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, and National Clinical Research Center for Geriatrics.

Infants from minoritized racial and ethnic backgrounds who have positive newborn screening tests for cystic fibrosis received their diagnostic follow-up for the disease later than recommended and later than white, non-Hispanic infants, according to a study published in the Journal of Cystic Fibrosis. The study also found that this delay in diagnosis and treatment was associated with worse early nutritional outcomes and may contribute to previously documented, considerable health disparities in people with cystic fibrosis.
Cystic fibrosis is a progressive genetic disease that damages multiple organs, including the lungs and pancreas. The disease is caused by variants in the Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane conductance Regulator (CFTR) gene that lead to insufficient flow of salt and water in and out of cells. In the lungs, this creates buildup of thick, sticky mucus that can result in chronic lung infections and severe lung disease. Early nutritional deficits are associated with increased respiratory signs and symptoms, lower pulmonary function and childhood mortality.
“While race is a social construct, CFTR gene variant distribution differs by race and ethnicity, and people with cystic fibrosis from minoritized groups have more rare variants. This can mean less than two variants are found on newborn screening (cystic fibrosis is an autosomal recessive disease, so two variants must be present for disease to occur), raising less clinical concern and delay diagnostic evaluation,” said lead author Susanna McColley, MD, a pulmonologist from Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and Professor of Pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “Also, medical literature often describes cystic fibrosis as mainly affecting white people, specifically those of northern European ancestry, which may result in bias when interpreting newborn screening results for infants of other racial and ethnic backgrounds, leading to delays in evaluation and initiation of treatment.”
Newborn screening results for cystic fibrosis are generally sent to primary care offices that refer infants with out-of-range tests to facilities with expertise in diagnostic testing and treatment. It is recommended that infants who screen positive for cystic fibrosis receive their diagnostic evaluation by 28 days of age.
The study found that infants who were Black/African American, American Indian/ Native Alaskan, Asian, and/or Hispanic received diagnostic follow-up at median age of 31 days, compared to 22 days for white infants. These infants also more often had symptoms at presentation, which places them at risk for severe complications that could be fatal.
“Prompt evaluation is critical for all infants with out-of-range newborn screening test for cystic fibrosis,” said Dr. McColley. “Because pre-symptomatic treatment of cystic fibrosis is the overarching goal of newborn screening, we advocate for quality improvement activities that lead to timely diagnosis of all infants. We absolutely must achieve equity in diagnostic evaluation and initiation of care for cystic fibrosis. Children’s lives depend on it.”
The study was supported by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
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Materials provided by Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Despite a federal mandate requiring access to early intervention programs (EIP) for children with disabilities, fewer than half of autistic children in four New Jersey counties received services before 36 months of age, according to a Rutgers study.
Income and race-based disparities were significant obstacles to accessing EIP support, researchers found.
“For infants and toddlers on the autism spectrum, early intervention is important for improved later-life outcomes,” said Josephine Shenouda, an adjunct professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health and lead author of the study published in JAMA Pediatrics. “We wanted to understand the level of early intervention participation among children with autism.”
In the U.S., access to EIP for young children is mandated by law as part of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. However, the extent to which children with autism participate in early intervention programs had not previously been measured.
Shenouda and her colleagues analyzed data collected between 2006 and 2016 by the New Jersey Autism Study, an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) monitoring system developed and maintained by researchers at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.
By analyzing the medical and special education records of 23,441 children in Essex, Hudson, Ocean and Union counties, the researchers identified 4,050 8-year-olds with autism spectrum disorder. Fewer than half (1,887; 47 percent) had received EIP services.
The researchers linked cases to data representing different indicators of wealth, including median household income, and found that ASD children residing in affluent areas were 80 percent more likely to receive EIP services than children residing in disadvantaged areas. Black and Hispanic children also were less likely to participate in EIP.
While the study was conducted in New Jersey metropolitan areas, Shenouda said the findings have important implications nationwide.
“New Jersey is known as an epicenter of autism, but it also has many resources for autism detection and treatment,” she said. “If only half of the children with autism in our study area are getting early interventions, chances are the disparities are even more pronounced in other communities and regions with fewer services.”
Shenouda said there may be multiple reasons why children from disadvantaged and minority areas aren’t enrolled in EIP, such as lower rates of ASD screening or less likely follow-through with recommendations. In either case, focused outreach can help increase EIP referrals and participation.
Shenouda added: “With autism prevalence estimates approaching 7 percent in some areas, we need universal autism screening between 18 and 36 months and enhanced support for the early intervention system. These actions will reduce economic and race-based disparities in autism identification and care.”
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Materials provided by Rutgers University. Original written by Gregory Bruno. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

New research in biomechanics measures the impact of head-first, hand-first and feet-first diving and the likelihood of injury at different diving heights, providing data-driven recommendations for safe diving and a model for measuring the impact of different shapes as they plunge into water.
For untrained divers, the researchers found that spinal cord and neck injury is likely above eight meters in a head-first dive; collarbone injury is likely above 12 meters in a hand-first dive; and knee injury is likely above 15 meters with feet-first diving.
The study, “Slamming Dynamics of Diving and its Implications for Diving-Related Injuries” published July 27 in Science Advances.
“Water is 1,000 times denser than air, so you are moving from a very dilute medium to a very dense medium, and you’re going to experience a huge impact,” said Sunghwan Jung, professor of biological and environmental engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and senior author of the paper. “Humans can choose how they dive, so we wanted to look at the effect of the position of diving. We also wanted to come up with a more universal or general theory of how objects or different shape fronts dive into water, so we looked at the diving fronts of both humans in different postures and animals and measured the forces of impact of the different shapes.”
Anupam Pandey, a postdoctoral researcher in Jung’s lab, is the paper’s first author.
The researchers used 3D-printed models of a near-life-sized human head and torso, torso and head with arms outstretched, and feet, as well as models of a harbor porpoise head, a Northern gannet beak, and a basilisk lizard foot to examine the impact of curved, pointy, and flat shapes, respectively, on the water’s surface. They plunged the objects into water and measured the forces acting on them and how they were distributed over time and were able to develop a theoretical model describing the increase in force on the various shapes, and how those forces increased with the height of the dive.
They then plotted the height and impact with the force human muscles, ligaments and bones can withstand and found the probability of different injuries — to the collarbone, spine and knee — at different heights and at different diving positions.
“In human biomechanics, there is a huge literature on the falling injury, especially in the elderly, and the sports injury, like concussions, but I don’t know of any other work on diving injuries,” Jung said.
The research could help guide people to safer diving choices — a feet-first dive, for instance is safer from higher perches — and it also highlights how well-adapted plunge-diving animals are to mitigating the impacts of diving. Northern gannets, for instance, have shallower beak angles that allow them to dive into water at up to 24 meters per second. Dolphins have shortened, fused cervical vertebrae that support their head while they porpoise, the authors write.
Understanding how animals or objects cross interfaces is among the aims of Jung’s broader research program. His lab has studied the diving mechanics of animals and how animals jump out of water; a current project focuses on how a fox dives into snow.
“As engineers, we are very good at making the airplane fly in the air. We are good at making a submarine move in the water, but crossing the interface, as you see in the animal world, is no easy task, and is something engineers are interested in — having a drone go from water to air or air to water, for example,” Jung said. “So maybe this study can shed light on the new engineering design in the future that would allow systems to do this. For us, we try to understand the fundamental mechanics.”
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation.
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Materials provided by Cornell University. Original written by Caitlin Hayes, courtesy of the Cornell Chronicle. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

People who eat the highest amounts of ultra-processed foods like soft drinks, chips and cookies may have a higher risk of developing dementia than those who eat the lowest amounts, according to a new study published in the July 27, 2022, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Researchers also found that replacing ultra-processed foods in a person’s diet with unprocessed or minimally processed foods was associated with a lower risk. The study does not prove that ultra-processed foods cause dementia. It only shows an association.
Ultra-processed foods are high in added sugar, fat and salt, and low in protein and fiber. They include soft drinks, salty and sugary snacks, ice cream, sausage, deep-fried chicken, yogurt, canned baked beans and tomatoes, ketchup, mayonnaise, packaged guacamole and hummus, packaged breads and flavored cereals.
“Ultra-processed foods are meant to be convenient and tasty, but they diminish the quality of a person’s diet,” said study author Huiping Li, PhD, of Tianjin Medical University in China. “These foods may also contain food additives or molecules from packaging or produced during heating, all of which have been shown in other studies to have negative effects on thinking and memory skills. Our research not only found that ultra-processed foods are associated with an increased risk of dementia, it found replacing them with healthy options may decrease dementia risk.”
For the study, researchers identified 72,083 people from the UK Biobank, a large database containing the health information of half a million people living in the United Kingdom. Participants were age 55 and older and did not have dementia at the start of the study. They were followed for an average of 10 years. By the end of the study, 518 people were diagnosed with dementia.
During the study, participants filled out at least two questionnaires about what they ate and drank the previous day. Researchers determined how much ultra-processed food people ate by calculating the grams per day and comparing it to the grams per day of other foods to create a percentage of their daily diet. They then divided participants into four equal groups from lowest percentage consumption of ultra-processed foods to highest.
On average, ultra-processed foods made up 9% of the daily diet of people in the lowest group, an average of 225 grams per day, compared to 28% for people in the highest group, or an average of 814 grams per day. One serving of items like pizza or fish sticks was equivalent to 150 grams. The main food group contributing to high ultra-processed food intake was beverages, followed by sugary products and ultra-processed dairy.

Researchers from McMaster University and Queen’s University have discovered a gut bacterial ‘super-producer’ of histamine that can cause pain flare-ups in some patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
The culprit is what has now been named Klebsiella aerogenes, the McMaster-Queen (MQ) strain, identified in up to 25 per cent of gut microbiota samples from patients with IBS. Researchers examined stool microbiota samples from both Canadian and American patient cohorts.
“We followed up these patients for several months and found high levels of stool histamine at the time when the patients reported severe pain, and low stool histamine when they were pain-free,” said senior author Premysl Bercik, professor of medicine of McMaster’s Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine and a gastroenterologist.
The McMaster-Queen’s research team pinpointed the bacterium Klebsiella aerogenes as the key histamine producer by studying germ-free mice colonized with gut microbiota from patients with IBS. They also colonized some mice with gut microbiota from healthy volunteers as a control group.
The study found that the bacterium Klebsiella aerogenes converts dietary histidine, an essential amino acid present in animal and plant protein, into histamine, a known mediator of pain.
The bacterial histamine then activates the gut immune system through histamine-4 receptor, which draws immune mast cells into the intestines. These activated mast cells produce even more histamine and other pain-signalling mediators, triggering inflammation and pain.

New research has advanced COVID-19 vaccine work in several ways: using a modified live attenuated mumps virus for delivery, showing that a more stable coronavirus spike protein stimulates a stronger immune response, and suggesting a dose up the nose has an advantage over a shot.
Based on these combined findings in rodent experiments, Ohio State University scientists envision one day incorporating a coronavirus antigen into the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine as a way to produce COVID-19 immunity in kids.
“We were pushing to make a vaccine for infants and children with the idea that if we could incorporate the mumps COVID vaccine into the MMR vaccine, you’d have protection against four pathogens — measles, mumps, rubella and SARS-CoV-2 — in a single immunization program,” said Jianrong Li, senior author of the study and a professor of virology in Ohio State’s Department of Veterinary Biosciences and Infectious Diseases Institute.
“If infants and children could develop immunity against COVID infection with the MMR vaccine, that would be great — no extra immunization needed.”
The research is published today (July 27, 2022) in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
To create the antigen that stimulates immunity in this vaccine candidate, researchers used a prefusion version of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein — the shape it is in on the surface of the virus before the virus infects a cell. The spike was locked into this form by changing six of its amino acids to prolines, an inflexible amino acid.

In mouse studies, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine report that lactating mothers expose their feeding pups to triclosan, an antimicrobial commonly used in consumer products, resulting in early signs of liver damage that can eventually lead to more serious impairment and illness, such as nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).
The findings published in the July 27, 2022 online issue of Nature Communications.
NAFLD is the most common chronic liver condition in the United States, affecting an estimated 100 million adults. It occurs when fat accumulates in liver cells due to causes other than excessive alcohol use, impairing organ function. The precise cause is not known, but diet and genetics play substantial roles. Up to 50 percent of obese people are believed to have NAFLD.
Approximately 20 percent of persons with NAFLD transition to NASH, a more advanced form of the disease characterized by increasingly severe inflammation and organ damage that may result in scarring of the liver, cirrhosis and cancer.
According to a study published by UC San Diego scientists in June 2022, NASH is the fastest growing cause of liver cancer deaths globally, especially in the Americas. It is driven by rapidly rising obesity rates. The prevalence of obesity in the U.S. in 2017 was 42.4 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control, up from 30.5 percent in 2000.
The prevalence of NAFLD in children is rising, along with obesity rates in the young. It is estimated that 9.6 percent of children ages 2 to 19 years have NAFLD. A recent study by UC San Diego scientists found that pediatric NAFLD increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes later in life.

Why are bats often linked to incubating coronaviruses such as those behind COVID-19, SARS and other highly contagious respiratory diseases?
A new Tulane University study suggests that the link between bats and coronaviruses is likely due to a long-shared history, and that their genetic information can help us prevent and manage future pandemics.
Hannah Frank, PhD, a bat expert in the Tulane University School of Science and Engineering, led the effort in collaboration with David Enard (University of Arizona) and Scott Boyd (Stanford University).
“We found that bats have been under unusual pressure from coronaviruses compared to other mammals, supporting the idea that bats are rich sources of coronaviruses and may yield insights for future prevention or treatment,” said Frank, an assistant professor in the Tulane Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
Published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the Royal Society’s flagship biological research journal, the study was funded by two National Science Foundation grants targeted at better understanding bat immunity and evolution in response to pathogens, especially in the wake of COVID-19.
“Pandemics originating from animals highlight the need to understand how natural hosts have evolved in response to emerging human pathogens and which groups may be susceptible to infection and/or potential reservoirs to mitigate public health and conservation concerns,” Frank said.
In the largest bat and mammal dataset to date, the team investigated an enzyme called angiotensin-converting enzyme 2, or ACE2, the host protein that serves as a receptor for the viruses that cause COVID-19 and SARS. They also studied dipeptidyl-peptidase 4, DPP4 or CD26, which acts as a receptor for MERS-CoV, the virus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome.
Both the ACE2 and DPP4 genes are under strong selection pressure in bats, more so than in other mammals, and in residues that contact viruses.
“Additionally, mammalian groups vary in their similarity to humans in residues that contact SARS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2 and MERS-CoV, and increased similarity to humans in binding residues is broadly predictive of susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2,” Frank said.
The study adds to our understanding of the relationship between coronaviruses and mammals, especially bats, and provides diverse data for studies of how host proteins are bound by coronaviruses.
“This study gives us greater insight into how mammals, particularly bats, have evolved with coronaviruses,” she said. “It also highlights broad patterns in susceptibility that may prove useful for managing this and future pandemics.”
Frank cautions that the research shouldn’t cause people to fear bats. They play an important role in our ecosystem, making a significant contribution to pest control, pollinating plants and spreading seeds. The U.S. Wildlife and Fisheries Department estimates that bats eat enough insects to save more than $3 billion annually in crop damage and pesticide costs in the United States.
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Materials provided by Tulane University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.