By Daily Mail Reporter Sleeping with the light on could leave you feeling low the next day, scientists have warned. They say that a night-light – however dim – may affect the structure of the brain, raising the odds of depression. The eerie glow emitted by a TV or the seemingly reassuring presence of a night-light could be enough to impact on mental health. It is the latest in a long line of warnings about the potential dangers of disrupting the body’s natural sleep-wake cycle. There are concerns that shift workers are at higher risk of breast cancer and, only last month, a study linked...

By Dave Lee Suicide bombings have become the defining act of political violence of our time. From Afghanistan to Madrid, London to Sri Lanka, they are an all pervasive presence in our political landscape and a crucial tactic employed in modern day terrorism. As the inquest into the 7/7 London bombings tries to piece together the events of that day, little research has ever been done on the minds of suicide bombers themselves. Trying to discover exactly why a suicide bomber would kill themselves to further an apparent cause is, for obvious reasons, an impossible task. Read more…

Adults Who Started Smoking Marijuana Before Age 16 Performed Worse on Tests Than People Who Started Smoking Later By Kathleen Doheny Early marijuana use appears to take a toll on the brain, according to new research. Young adults who began smoking marijuana before age 16 performed worse on cognitive tests compared to those who began smoking after age 16, says researcher Staci Ann Gruber, PhD, of Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital, Boston. She presented her findings at a news conference Monday at Neuroscience 2010, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego. Although...

By Miriam Falco Giving children antibiotics for ear infections does little to speed their recovery while raising the risk of some side effects, according to a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study found that 80 out of 100 otherwise healthy children would recover from an acute ear infection within a few days if given medication only to relieve pain or fevers. If all 100 were given antibiotics instead, 92 would be better in the same period, said Dr. Tumaini Coker, the study’s lead author. “But we would also expect three to 10 kids to develop...

By Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times A vitamin D deficiency doubles the risk of fatal strokes in whites, but has no effect on the risk in blacks, even though blacks are more likely to have vitamin D deficiencies and are 65% more likely to die from strokes, researchers said Sunday. The results were puzzling, said Dr. Erin Michos of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. “We thought maybe the lower vitamin D levels might actually explain why blacks have higher risks for strokes,” she said. Stroke is the third leading cause of death in the United States, killing more than...

Sight of Meat Puts People at Ease, Study Suggests Finding surprised researchers who expected a more aggressive response FRIDAY, Nov. 12 (HealthDay News) — That feeling of goodwill when family and friends gather for the Thanksgiving meal may be due to the fact that the sight of meat on the table calms people, a new study suggests. The researchers in the psychology department at McGill University in Montreal were surprised by their finding. They had expected that seeing meat would make people more aggressive. “I was inspired by research on priming and aggression, that has shown that...

A scientific breakthrough could pave the way for the development of vaccines against pneumonia, meningitis and septicaemia, researchers have said. The discovery by scientists in Leicester and Dublin changes understanding of how the body’s immune system responds to infection caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae. The bacteria causes a range of infections including pneumonia and meningitis, and it is hoped the discovery will lead to the development of more effective vaccines. The research, jointly led by Dr Aras Kadioglu from the University of Leicester and Dr Ed Lavelle from Trinity College...

Better diagnosis and screening may play a role in increase, researchers say WEDNESDAY, Nov. 10 (HealthDay News) — The number of U.S. children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) jumped nearly 22 percent in a recent four-year period, meaning nearly one in every 10 kids is now diagnosed with the disorder, U.S. health officials report. “Based on our parent surveys, there has been an increase in parent-reported ADHD diagnosis among their children,” said lead author Susanna Visser of the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “This increase was from...

Teens who text 120 times a day or more — and there seem to be a lot of them — are more likely to have had sex or used alcohol and drugs than kids who don’t send as many messages, according to provocative new research. The study’s authors aren’t suggesting that “hyper-texting” leads to sex, drinking or drugs, but say it’s startling to see an apparent link between excessive messaging and that kind of risky behavior. The study concludes that a significant number of teens are very susceptible to peer pressure and also have permissive or absent parents, said...

Tumors in people who never smoked had more genetic abnormalities, study says By Jenifer Goodwin New research suggests that lung cancer in people who have never smoked may be a different disease than it is in smokers. Scientists compared the genetic characteristics of lung cancer tumors in 30 people who never smoked to tumors in 53 smokers or former smokers. The tumors of people who had never smoked had twice as many DNA abnormalities as people who were current or former smokers, said study author Kelsie Thu, a doctoral candidate at the British Columbia Cancer Research Centre in Vancouver. “This...