Tag: health

Treadmill Desk (Photo courtesy of Marcolm via freedigitalphotos.net) Health 

Walk While You Work: Do treadmill desks help?

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Treadmill desks help sedentary office workers get out of their chairs and get moving, but researchers at Oregon State University have found that walking while you work will not automatically rectify an otherwise unhealthy lifestyle. Seth Roberts, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley designed a treadmill desk in 1996. Since then, this kind of hybrid workstation — part office furniture, part exercise machine — has been gaining popularity. How effective is a treadmill desk for weight loss? In a 2007 study, James Levine of the Mayo…

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Tapeworm in brain tissue (CDC) Biology Health 

Tapeworm Removed from Man’s Brain

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Doctors in the UK recently removed a very rare tapeworm from a man’s brain that had been living there for four years. During its residency, the worm traveled five centimeters from one side of the brain to the other before it was detected and removed. Following the successful operation, a team took the opportunity to sequence the genome of this rare and poorly understood parasite. The tapeworm, Spirometra erinaceieuropaei, has been reported only 300 times worldwide since 1953 and never before in the UK. The parasite causes sparganosis: inflammation of…

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Eye on tech background, jscreationzs via freedigitalphotos.net Health New Technologies 

Artificial Retina Could Someday Restore Vision

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An international and interdisciplinary team of scientists is working on a compact, artificial retina that could someday be used to restore the eyesight of people with retinal degeneration. The gradual loss of eyesight, often caused by the degeneration of the retina, can be a life-altering health issue for many people, especially as they age. The development of a prosthetic retina, however, could help reverse conditions that affect this crucial part of the eye. A growing number of medical devices capable of sending sensory signals to the brain are now available…

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