Although the role of breast density in breast cancer has been known, researchers at the Carlos III Health Institute (ISCIII), Spain, have now explored the influence of certain characteristics on breast density, the journal Breast Cancer Research and Treatment reports.

Breast density refers to women who have more fibrous connective and glandular tissue than fatty tissue. It can make breast cancer difficult for a radiologist to see on a mammogram, according to an ISCIII statement.

Virginia Lope, researcher at the National Centre for Epidemiology at the ISCIII, explains that “accumulated exposure to hormones along with growth factors in the earlier stages of life when the breasts begin to develop both condition breast tissue composition and influence the probability of developing a tumour as an adult”.

During the 2010 annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), various studies were presented that showed that women with a mammographic density of 75 percent or above are five times more likely to develop breast cancer in comparison to women with a low density.

Furthermore, studies demonstrate that women who experience a reduction in breast density over six years are less at risk than those whose breast density remains stable.

Although breast density is clearly hereditary, other factors have an influence. These include the age of the woman when she has her first child and the number of children she has.

The authors conclude that “many studies used mammographic density to investigate the possible influence of other exposures in breast cancer risk”.

University of Michigan Ann Arbor engineers worked out a method in which vibrations in the chest cavity deform a layer of piezoelectric material, which is able to convert mechanical stress into electrical current.

Tests indicate that the device could perform at heart rates from seven to 700 beats per minute (well below and above the normal range), and that it could deliver eight times the energy required for a pacemaker, according to a university statement.

Researchers have searched for ways to prolong battery life, trying to power a pacemaker using blood sugar, or the motion of the hands and legs.

But these methods either interfere with metabolism or require a more drastic surgery, such as passing a wire from the limbs to the chest area, the journal Applied Physics Letters reported.

Furthermore, the authors write, the amount of energy generated is always larger than the amount required to run a pacemaker, regardless of heart rate.

Though the team has yet to develop a prototype that is bio-compatible, they say that the potential to package this energy harvester with pacemakers gives it an advantage over competing methods.

It was conducted by Hannah Gardener and colleagues from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and Columbia University Medical Centre, the Journal of General Internal Medicine reports.

Diet soft drinks are typically sugar-free, artificially sweetened, non-alcoholic carbonated beverages generally marketed towards health-conscious people, diabetics, athletes, and other people who want to lose weight.

Gardener and team examined the relationship between both diet and regular soft drink consumption and risk of stroke or myocardial infarction (heart attack), according to a Miami statement.

Data were analyzed from 2,564 participants in the Northern Manhattan Study, which was designed to determine stroke incidence, risk factors and prognosis in a multi-ethnic urban population.

The researchers looked at how often individuals drank soft drinks — diet and regular — and the number of vascular events that occurred over a 10-year period.

They found that those who drank diet soft drinks daily were 43 percent more likely to have suffered a vascular event than those who drank none, after taking into account pre-existing vascular conditions such as metabolic syndrome, diabetes and high blood pressure.

Gardener concludes: “Our results suggest a potential association between daily diet soft drink consumption and vascular outcomes. However, the mechanisms by which soft drinks may affect vascular events are unclear.”

They were given drinks containing 429 milligrams of the plant chemical polyphenols — or the equivalent of eight and a half cups of tea a day.

A second group were given a tea-flavoured placebo.

After six months, the blood pressure of the tea-drinking group had fallen by between two and three mmHg, the measurement of pressure used in medicine.

A blood pressure fluctuating with the heartbeat between 112 and 63 mmHg is considered healthy, while a reading fluctuating between 140 and 90 is deemed high.

If the experiment was emulated by the general population, the number of people with high blood pressure would be cut by 10 percent and the risk of heart disease would fall by between seven and 10 percent.

“Our study has demonstrated for the first time to our knowledge that long-term regular consumption of black tea can result in significantly lower blood pressures in individuals with normal to high-normal range blood pressures,” the team, led by Jonathan Hodgson, wrote in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.

Adding milk to tea also does not affect the body’s ability to absorb polyphenols, earlier studies have suggested.

Green tea is believed to have many health benefits as it is high in antioxidants. It is said to help in weight loss, prevent glaucoma and reduce risk of cancer.

The news comes from an Italian study into ‘calorific restriction’ – the idea that near-starvation rations boost health and extend life.

Scientists have long known of the phenomenon, but struggled to work out just what it is about severely cutting calories that improves health.

For the study, it was decided to focus on a protein called CREB1 that is known to be important to memory and learning. While conducting experiments on mice, researcher Giovambattista Pani showed that cutting calories boosted learning if the animals could still make CREB1. Besides, he also showed that cutting calories boosts the amount of the protein made in the brain.

It was also found the animals’ calorie count was only cut by 25 to 30 percent but in human terms, this equates to about 600 calories a day.

The toys include Road Rippers Lightning Rods, Tonka Mighty Motorized Fire Truck, Marvel Super Shield Captain America, Green Lantern Colossal Cannon, etc, said a university statement.

“Generally toys are safe if used properly,” said Hamid Djalilian, associate professor of otolaryngology and director of neurotology and skull base surgery at California.

“We tested the sound levels at the speaker and again at 12 inches, which is about the length of a toddler’s arm,” he said.

According to Djalilian: “Children are very sensitive to loud and high-pitched sounds. Problems can arise if a noisy toy is held too close to the ears, hearing loss from noise damage is permanent and not currently curable.”

Unprotected exposure to sounds above 85 decibels for a prolonged period can lead to hearing impairment, according to the American Academy of Otolaryngology.

Two factors contribute to this – loudness and duration. The louder a sound is, the less time it takes to cause hearing loss, Djalilian noted.

He suggested that someone buying a noisy toy for a child should pay attention to the speaker’s location, which usually should be under the item than on top.

Djalilian also recommended that an adult should hold the toy and listen to its sound.

“If it hurts your ears then it’s probably too loud for a child,” he added.

The men were recruited from January 2005 to June 2007.

Half the number of participants in the CHAMP study were born in Australia while 20 percent were born in Italy. The other countries of birth were Britain, Greece and China, according to a Concord statement.

A total of 266 deaths were observed during the follow-up. The results show that their average walking speed was 0.88 metres per second (mps). No men with walking speeds of 1.36 mps (five kmph) or above died.

The authors concluded that the results support their theory “that faster speeds are protective against mortality because fast walkers can maintain a safe distance from the Grim Reaper.”

Activated sludge is produced during sewage treatment by aerating the sludge and allowing the bugs to breakdown the organic material, according to a statement by the universities.

Researchers isolated the gene coding for one of the GroEL subunits from the sludge. GroEL is a 14 subunit ‘chaperone’ protein. They were able to programme this protein to trap enteric viruses. Even a single enteric virus can infect the intestinal tract.

Study co-author Daisuke Sano from Hokkaido University explained: “Once developed this easy-to-use method could be used to detect low concentrations of viruses in the clinic or environment.”

Clean drinking water is a vital necessity but it still remains out of the reach of 900 million people worldwide, according to UNICEF figures.

Viruses may be present at a very low concentration but still make people ill.

Deep vein thrombosis — blood clots that form in the veins — can cause pain and swelling, but can also be fatal if the clot is dislodged and travels into the blood vessels of the lungs.

To look for new risk factors for blood clots, scientists at Imperial College London studied patients with hereditary haemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT), the journal Thorax reports.

HHT is an inherited disease of the blood vessels, the main symptoms of which are excessive bleeding from the nose and gut, according to an Imperial College statement.

“Most of our patients who had blood clots did not have any of the known risk factors,” said Claire Shovlin, from the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London, who led the study.

Shovlin and team analysed blood from 609 patients reviewed at the HHT clinic at Imperial College’s Hammersmith Hospital from 1999 to 2011, to look for differences between the patients who had blood clots and those who did not.

Many of the patients had low iron levels because of iron lost through bleeding. The researchers found that low levels of iron in the blood were a strong risk factor for blood clots.

Patients who took iron supplements did not have higher risk, suggesting that treatment for iron deficiency can prevent blood clots.

“Our study shows that in people with HHT, low levels of iron in the blood is a potentially treatable risk factor for blood clots,” Shovlin said.

A combination of environmental and lifestyle factors during pregnancy and early infancy are thought to be responsible for the sharp rise in allergic diseases, suggests a study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.

Hopefully this new knowledge will be useful in future allergy prevention, the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology reports.

“Psycho-social factors and the stress hormone cortisol are associated with allergic diseases,” says Fredrik Stenius of South General Hospital, Stockholm, according to a Karolinska Institutet statement.

“Our study found that children with low salivary cortisol levels as infants have a lower prevalence of allergies during the first two years of life, compared to other children.”

The researchers believe that factors related to stress regulation also influence the development of infant allergies.