Lifeboat Foundation

Amazon is reportedly developing a voice-activated wearable device that can recognize human emotions.

If successful, the health product could help the company improve its targeted advertisements and make better product recommendations, reports Bloomberg. The unnamed device could also advise humans on how to better interact with others.

A source showed Bloomberg internal Amazon documents that revealed a few details about the futuristic health and wellness product.

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A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Korea and Australia have found a possible link between the gut microbiome in infants and development of allergies. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their study of a certain antibody response in young mice and what they found.

Food allergies have been widely reported in the past few years, particularly in children. Scientists have been taking a closer look at the causes of the seemingly sudden rise in the number of people who are allergic to certain foods. In this new effort, the researchers looked into the possibility of a connection between food allergies and the gut biome.

The research started after some team members noticed that lab mice raised in a sterile environment (who also had no gut microbiome) expressed higher levels of immunoglobulin E (IgE) when they matured enough to start eating solid food. Prior research has shown that IgE is a mediator that plays a role during an allergic response—when allergens are detected, IgEs send out signals alerting other parts of the immune system, which in turn release chemicals that result in inflammation, a major allergy symptom.

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Local health officials say cheap charlatans are likely using contaminated equipment.

People who have bipolar disorder may be more likely to later develop Parkinson’s disease than people who do not have bipolar disorder, according at a study published in the May 22, 2019, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

“Previous studies have shown a relationship between depression and Parkinson’s disease, but few studies have looked at whether there is a relationship between bipolar disorder and Parkinson’s,” said study author Mu-Hong Chen, MD, Ph.D., of Taipei Veterans General Hospital in Taiwan.

For the study, researchers examined a national Taiwanese health database for people were diagnosed with bipolar disorder between 2001 and 2009 and who had no history of Parkinson’s disease, for a total of 56,340 people. They were matched with 225,360 people of the same age, sex and other factors who had never been diagnosed with bipolar disorder or Parkinson’s disease as a control group. Then the two groups were followed until the end of 2011.

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A dental investigator with the National Institutes of Health will begin clinical human trials this year of a laser technique that stimulates stem cells for the regeneration of teeth and, possibly, other human body parts.

A new University of Colorado Boulder study, published in the journal Experimental Physiology, helps explain why.

It found that people who sleep fewer than 7 hours per night have lower blood levels of three physiological regulators, or microRNAs, which influence gene expression and play a key role in maintaining vascular health.

The findings could potentially lead to new, non-invasive tests for sleep deprived patients concerned about their health, the authors said.

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The global health community gulped Thursday with the announcement that a case of Ebola had been confirmed in a city of more than 1 million in Congo, bringing the latest outbreak of the often deadly hemorrhagic fever out of remote rural areas. “Confirmation of urban #Ebola in #DRC is a game changer in this outbreak – the challenge just got much much tougher,” the World Health Organization’s emergencies chief, Dr. Peter Salama, said on Twitter. Here’s a look at the outbreak.

What is Ebola?

Ebola is a virus that without preventive measures can spread quickly between people and is fatal in up to 90 percent of cases. The symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding. Symptoms can start to occur between two and 21 days from infection, according to WHO.

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Exposure to environmental pollutants can cause alterations in brain development that affect sexual development and fertility for several generations, according to findings to be presented in Lyon, at the European Society of Endocrinology annual meeting, ECE 2019. The offspring of pregnant rats exposed to a mixture of common endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), at doses equivalent to those commonly experienced by people, showed impairments in sexual development and maternal behaviour that were passed on through several generations. These findings suggest that current levels of endocrine-disrupting chemicals in our environment may already be causing long-lasting harm and that people and agencies should take measures to minimise exposure.

Endocrine-disrupting chemicals can interfere with the normal function of our hormones and have previously been associated with infertility and altered sexual development in animals and people. We are exposed to hundreds of these pollutants in our daily lives, as they are used in the manufacture of plastics, pesticides and medicines. However, the extent of damage being done to our health and the consequences to future generations remains unclear. Rodent studies have suggested that exposure to EDCs can affect brain development through several generations but the generational effects on sexual development and reproduction have not previously been investigated.

In this study, David Lopez Rodriguez a graduate student in Anne-Simone Parent’s lab at the University of Liege in Belgium monitored the sexual development of three generations of rats, whose parent generation only were exposed to a mixture of common EDCs during pregnancy and lactation. The female rats born in the first and second generation showed impairments in their care for their own pups. However, the female rats in the second and third generation exhibited a delayed onset of puberty and altered reproductive cycle and ovarian follicle development, indicating that their fertility was affected, even though they were never themselves exposed to the EDCs. These changes were associated with altered gene expression in their brains that are known to affect how reproductive hormones are regulated.

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