Discover the Science of Health
This week is National Public Health Week (NPHW). The annual observance brings U.S. communities together to recognize the contributions of public health and highlight issues that are important to improving the public’s health. The theme for National Public Health Week (NPHW) 2012 — A Healthier America Begins Today: Join the Movement — addresses the issue of prevention and wellness.
The 2012 County Health Rankings were released this week [1]. Now in their third year, the Rankings are increasingly being used by community leaders to help them identify health challenges, take action and improve the health of their residents.
The Rankings are published on-line every year by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). Using a standard way to measure how healthy people are and how long they live, the Rankings assess the overall health of nearly every county in all 50 states.
Diabetics often need to test blood glucose levels several times a day in order to make appropriate decisions about nutrition and, in the case of type 1 diabetics, insulin administration. Medisana, a German company, has developed hardware and an app that allow diabetics to test — and keep track of — blood glucose on an iPhone or iPad. The hardware, called the GlucoDock, connects to an Apple mobile device. The user puts a very small drop of blood on a test strip, and inserts it into the device. GlucoDock, via the VitaDock software, measures blood sugar and records the measurement for personal data tracking purposes.
Over the past decade, collaborative research efforts to support the discovery and development of medicines has increased dramatically. Last month, the National Institutes of Health and Eli Lilly and Company announced a new collaboration: they will generate a publicly available resource to profile the effects of thousands of approved and investigational medicines in a variety of advanced disease-relevant testing systems [1]. In-depth knowledge of the biological profiles of these medicines may enable researchers to better predict treatment outcomes, improve drug development, and lead to more specific and effective approaches.
Neuroscientists — scientists who study the brain — have long attempted to understand the nature of memory. Engrams, or complete memories that are encoded in the brain, now appear to be stored physically as opposed to conceptually, according to research published in the journal Nature [1].
