“These new studies support previous findings that reducing sodium from very high intake levels to moderate levels improves health,” said Brian Strom, a professor of public health and preventive medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. “But they also suggest that lowering sodium intake too much may actually increase a person’s risk of some health problems.”

The studies reiterated that there is evidence that high sodium intake is associated with heart disease risk. However, it also found that studies showing that sodium intake below 2,300 mg per day lowers the risk of heart disease and stroke are too “inconsistent” to recommend extremely lowered sodium intake. Lower sodium intake was, in fact, found to be linked to “adverse health effects” for those with mid- to late-stage heart failure.

Researchers stated that the average U.S. adult consumes 3,400 mg (one and one-half teaspoons) or more of sodium per day. Current recommendations on sodium intake suggest that adults ages 14 to 50 lower their sodium intake to 2,300 mg per day, and that adults over 50 and those with hypertension, diabetes, and chronic kidney disease lower their intake to 1,500 mg per day.

Though the report calls current recommendations into question, it does not recommend an intake range for sodium. It also suggests that sodium could affect heart disease in ways other than blood pressure.

“These studies make clear that looking at sodium’s effects on blood pressure is not enough to determine dietary sodium’s ultimate impact on health,” said Strom. “Changes in diet are more complex than simply changing a single mineral. More research is needed to understand these pathways.”

A recent study suggests that the fluoride mystery is actually pretty simple – the mineral reduces the ability of bacteria to stick to teeth. This makes it so that the bacteria that causes cavities and other nasty mouth problems are easily removed with brushing.

Scientists used artificial teeth to study the effects of fluoride, but stumbled upon some problems. The main issue was that tooth composition can vary wildly so the effect of fluoride can change dramatically on a tooth-by-tooth basis. Still, they found that the artificial teeth, when subjected to fluoride, repelled negatively charged bacteria by negatively charging the tooth itself.

The study is inconclusive, however, and the fluoride mystery will continue to spur controversy. The most controversial, of course, is that fluoride is added to drinking water to prevent tooth decay. Scientists say that the fluoride in water is a controlled amount that poses no risk to humans who drink it, but some people still refuse to drink fluoridated water for fear that it may pose health risks.

Regardless, much research must still be conducted before scientists can fully understand the fluoride mystery. The next step is to see if fluoride can actually weaken bacteria, thus disabling its ability to build up “fortresses” on teeth.

[h/t: LiveScience]

The study, published this week in the journal Biological Psychiatry found that placental “folds” and trophoblast inclusions – abnormal cell growths – can be used to predict whether babies are at risk for autism.

Researchers looked at 117 placentas from infants who already had risk factors for autism, comparing them to 100 placentas from infants not known to be at risk for autism. The placentas from at-risk infants were found to have as many as 15 trophoblast inclusions. The most any placentas from non-at-risk infants had was two. The Yale researchers stated that placenta with four or more trophoblast inclusions “conservatively” predicts a 96.7% chance of the infant being at risk for autism.

The new findings are important, researchers say, because current diagnoses of autism typically happen at age 3 or older, while effective treatment for autism should start well before the child reaches that age.

“Regrettably couples without known genetic susceptibility must rely on identification of early signs or indicators that may not overtly manifest until the child’s second or third year of life,” said Dr. Harvey Kliman, senior author of the study and a research scientist in the OB/GYN department at Yale.

“I hope that diagnosing the risk of developing autism by examining the placenta at birth will become routine, and that the children who are shown to have increased numbers of trophoblast inclusions will have early interventions and an improved quality of life as a result of this test.”

(Image courtesy Patrick Lynch/Yale University)

Millennials, defined as those aged 18-34, were found to be more willing to allow companies track them or access their personal information compared to those 35 and older. Millennials were also found to be more receptive to the idea of targeted advertising, and were much more active on social media. All of this, though, is predicated on receiving some benefit for the lack of privacy.

“Millennials think differently when it comes to online privacy,” said Elaine Coleman, managing director of media and emerging technologies for Bovitz, the research firm that conducted the survey in conjunction with USC. “It’s not that they don’t care about it – rather they perceive social media as an exchange or an economy of ideas, where sharing involves participating in smart ways.”

Though the social benefit of most social media is clear, even more tangible benefits still don’t seem to entice those over 35 as much as they do Millennials. One question, for example, asked whether a survey respondent would reveal their location to a company in exchange for coupons to nearby businesses. 56% of Millennials would share their location, but only 42% of older respondents said they would.

“Online privacy is dead – Millennials understand that, while older users have not adapted,” said Jeffrey Cole, director of the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future. “Millennials recognize that giving up some of their privacy online can provide benefits to them. This demonstrates a major shift in online behavior – there’s no going back.”

(Infographic courtesy the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future)

(via BGR)

According to the NIH the study, called HVTN 505, has been running since 2009. 2,504 volunteers in 19 U.S. cities were chosen to undergo a series of immunizations that researchers hoped would prevent HIV infection and reduce viral loads in those infected (or receive a placebo). The volunteers were all either men who have sex with men or transgender people who have sex with men.

After reviewing data from the study this week, the monitoring board found that study participants who received the vaccine were just as likely to contract HIV as those who had not. In fact, more study participants who received the vaccine became infected with HIV than those who received a placebo, though the difference was not statistically significant. The vaccine also failed to reduce viral load among study participants who contracted HIV.

Due to the findings, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has stopped administering the vaccinations. Researchers will continue to follow current study participants, who will be contacted and informed of whether they received the vaccine or the placebo.

A new study has found that DBS in a specific brain region in mice can activate a dopamine type-2 receptor. The process was shown to reduce both the caloric intake and weight of obese mice. The study has been published in in the Journal of Neuroscience.

“Based on this research, DBS may provide therapeutic relief to binge eating, a behavior commonly seen in obese humans, and frequently unresponsive to other approaches,” said Tracy Bale, a neuroscience professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. “These results are our best evidence yet that targeting the nucleus accumbens with DBS may be able to modify specific feeding behaviors linked to body weight changes and obesity.”

According to the study’s authors, almost 50% of obese people binge eat. The researchers define binge eating as “uncontrollably” consuming high-calorie food within a short period of time. The mice that received DBS were shown to eat “significantly ” less high fat food. The long-term effects of DBS on obese mice also showed their glucose sensitivity improved.

DBS is currently used to reduce tremors in Parkinson’s disease patients.

“Once replicated in human clinical trials, DBS could rapidly become a treatment for people with obesity due to the extensive groundwork already established in other disease areas,” said Casey Halpern, lead author of the study and a resident in the Perelman School’s Department of Neurosurgery.

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have published their new findings in the latest issue of the journal Annals of Behavioral Medicine. Their study looked at “inactive” participants who were 45 or older and had “suboptimal” diets. After being divided and coached in different exercise and diet changes for one year, the group that changed both diet and exercise habits at the same time were most likely to meet the U.S. national guidelines for exercise and nutrition.

“It may be particularly useful to start both at the same time,” said Abby King, lead author of the study and a professor of medicine at Stanford. “If you need to start with one, consider starting with physical activity first.”

The study also showed that those who changed their diets first did not meet exercise goals as easily, while those who began exercising first were more likely to meet their nutritional goals.

“These health behaviors aren’t things that we change over a six-week period and then our job is done,” said King. “They’re things that people grapple with their whole lives, so to develop ‘touches’ of advice and support in a cost-efficient way is becoming more and more important.”

Since 2000, the FTC has conducted an undercover shopper survey. The goal is to have kids try to buy mature entertainment (like R-rated films or M-rated games), and see how many are turned away. Early on, the video game industry had a bad track record as few stores enforced games ratings, but video game retailers started to comply after the Entertainment Software Ratings Board established the ESRB Retail Council in 2005.

These efforts have paid off as the video game industry has the highest level of compliance among all retailers with only 13 percent of underage teenagers being able to buy M-rated games from stores. Other industries, like music and movies, sell explicit content CDs and R-rated movie tickets to 47 and 24 percent of underage teenagers respectively.

Going by retailer, the study found that Walmart had the worst compliance with game ratings by selling M-rated games to 25 percent of underage teenagers. Target had the best compliance with zero percent of teenagers being able to purchase M-rated games at the retailer.

It would be easy to say the study proves something, but it really only suggests that game ratings are effective. At the very least, the game industry is more effective at self-policing than other industries, but that could be due to the fact that other industries are never put under the same amount of public scrutiny that the game industry is subjected to.

Regardless, the games industry is doing a good job of keeping mature games out of the hands of minors. Now if only parents could stop buying mature-rated titles for their children. It gets a little tiresome hearing parents say the industry is rotting their child’s morals when they were the ones who neglected to notice the M-rating and content descriptors on the back of the box.

[h/t: The Hill]

The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, which is part of the European Commission, has released a study called “Digital Music Consumption on the Internet: Evidence from Clickstream Data.” The study followed over 16,000 European Internet users and found some interesting browsing habits for those who frequently visit pirate sites.

It was found that a large portion of users who are interested in music were found to visit both “pirate” sites and online music stores. In fact, they found that clicks on online music stores would be down two percent were it not for the existence of these “pirate” sites.

The study also found that free, legal streaming options are becoming far more important to the overall music industry. The finding helps support a previous finding that said streaming services were actually helping the industry earn more revenue. Going even further, the Commission found that visits to online music stores were up seven percent as a result of streaming services.

In short, the researchers found that music piracy, and legal streaming services, have no negative impact on digital music sales:

“Taken at face value, our findings indicate that digital music piracy does not displace legal music purchases in digital format. This means that although there is trespassing of private property rights, there is unlikely to be much harm done on digital music revenues.”

Of course, it should be noted that this study doesn’t outright confirm that piracy leads to greater sales. The study only found that people were more likely to visit online music stores and click. We could assume that sales happened, but we just don’t know.

The general ambiguity of the study may be why the Commission isn’t ready to make any recommendations for new laws or relaxing of current laws yet. It’s a shame really as the music industry has been rather successful in having sites censored by local ISPs claiming that the sites negatively impact its business. Research like this, however, may convince judges that there’s more to take into account when issuing Web stie bans in the future.

You can check out the study in its entirety below:

JRC79605 by torrentfreak

[h/t: TorrentFreak]

A new study out of Carnegie Mellon University followed over 5,000 Facebook users for six years to observe how much information they shared with others. Those with privacy concerns were able to limit what they shared for the first four years, but the privacy policy changes of the past few years have actually encouraged these same users to share more personal information with others.

Wait, how does that work? Facebook said that the new privacy controls would help limit what information is viewed by others. That’s absolutely true, and the new privacy controls may led to an increase in sharing information as users felt more secure. There may have been a Trojan Horse hidden in the new privacy policy, however, that has led to an increase in sharing.

The researchers point out that Facebook’s relatively new sharing system that allows “friends of friends” to see posts may be leading to this increase in sharing. Some users obviously don’t like that, but it seems that most don’t even notice. Most of us would like to think “friends of friends” would overlap with our own personal friend list. That’s usually the case, but it can sometimes lead to awkward situations where people you don’t like suddenly being able to comment on statuses that have a mutual friend tagged in it.

It’s these situations where Facebook’s privacy controls could be more refined to prevent accidental shares with unwanted parties. That being said, the social network’s privacy controls are apparently sufficient enough for the average user. Why would they share so much of their lives if it wasn’t?

[h/t: Huffington Post]