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Parental ‘feeding styles’ reflect children’s genes

Credit: CC0 Public Domain New research from King’s College London and UCL challenges the idea that a child’s weight largely reflects the way their parents feed them. Instead, parents appear to adopt feeding styles in response to their children’s natural body weight, which is largely genetically influenced. With childhood obesity at critical levels, researchers are ..
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Machine learning can be used to predict which patients require emergency admission

Credit: CC0 Public Domain Machine learning—a field of artificial intelligence that uses statistical techniques to enable computer systems to ‘learn’ from data—can be used to analyse electronic health records and predict the risk of emergency hospital admissions, a new study from The George Institute for Global Health at the University of Oxford has found. The ..
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Older adults’ abstract reasoning ability predicts depressive symptoms over time

Credit: CC0 Public Domain Age-related declines in abstract reasoning ability predict increasing depressive symptoms in subsequent years, according to data from a longitudinal study of older adults in Scotland. The research is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “Mental health in later life is a topic of increasing importance ..
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Researchers find inhibiting one protein destroys toxic clumps seen in Parkinson’s disease

Immunohistochemistry for alpha-synuclein showing positive staining (brown) of an intraneural Lewy-body in the Substantia nigra in Parkinson’s disease. Credit: Wikipedia A defining feature of Parkinson’s disease is the clumps of alpha-synuclein protein that accumulate in the brain’s motor control area, destroying dopamine-producing neurons. Natural processes can’t clear these clusters, known as Lewy bodies, and no ..
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Surgery, not antibiotics, should remain first-line treatment for appendicitis: study

Credit: CC0 Public Domain Treating appendicitis with antibiotics as an alternative to surgical removal of the inflamed organ was found to be more costly in the long term and result in higher rates of hospital readmissions, according to a study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. “People treated with antibiotics alone have ..
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New research has revealed we are actually better at remembering names than faces

Credit: George Hodan/public domain With the Christmas party season fast approaching, there will be plenty of opportunity to re-live the familiar, and excruciatingly-awkward, social situation of not being able to remember an acquaintance’s name. This cringe-worthy experience leads many of us to believe we are terrible at remembering names. However, new research has revealed this ..
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Scientists illuminate causes of hepatitis B virus-associated acute liver failure

Hepatitis B core antigen (arrow head) on the cellular membrane in cells transfected with hepatitis B virus. The virus is derived from a patient with acute liver failure. Credit: NIAID National Institutes of Health scientists and their collaborators found that hepatitis B virus (HBV)-associated acute liver failure (ALF)—a rare condition that can turn fatal within ..
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