Afterschool programs can modestly increase the amount of physical activity among girls in middle school, according to new results from the Trial of Activity for Adolescent Girls (TAAG), a multiple site, community based study supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health.

For almost 30 years - since the world’s first “test-tube” baby was born in July 1978 - the benefits of modern infertility treatments have been largely confined to couples in developed countries. There, we have seen more than 3 million babies born as a result of IVF and, in some countries, as many as 4 per cent of all babies born conceived by modern fertility techniques.

Viral illnesses that produce wheezing are very common in early childhood, but not all children who wheeze in the first several years of life go on to develop asthma. D.J. Jackson, MD and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin, Madison presented their study at the 2008 American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI) Annual Meeting in Philadelphia.

Since a patients’ understanding of asthma symptoms and their management plan is vital to preventing asthma complications, Amanda Hudgins, MD and colleagues at Texas Tech University presented their study at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI). They studied the effectiveness of a one day asthma camp on childrens’ understanding of their disease.

To foster interest in cancer research careers among the next generation of young scientists, the AACR will provide an opportunity for 10 undergraduate students to experience the field first hand at its Annual Meeting 2008 through the AACR-Thomas J. Bardos Science Education Awards for Undergraduate Students.

While every mode of transportation in the U.S. will be affected as the climate changes, potentially the greatest impact on transportation systems will be flooding of roads, railways, transit systems, and airport runways in coastal areas because of rising sea levels and surges brought on by more intense storms, says a new report from the National Research Council.

Anatasha Crawford, a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University, has been named a member of the Edward A. Bouchet Graduate Honor Society (Bouchet Society). Crawford is in the Tumor Biology Program at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the Georgetown University Medical Center.The Bouchet Society is named for the first African American doctoral recipient in the United States (Physics, Yale University, 1876).

Kidney damage often sets off a slew of complications in patients, spreading organ failure like wildfire throughout their bodies. Now, researchers at Johns Hopkins say they have evidence in mice that this deadly progression-at least to the lungs-may be due to genetic alterations in kidney-based genes that sabotage inflammation control and send toxic signals to healthy organs. The signals convince these organs to react as if they, too, are damaged.The study, led by Dmitry N.

Children who gain weight rapidly after having their tonsils and adenoids removed to treat sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) may improve in the short-term, but over time they may relapse or even worsen. African-American children also tend to relapse, according to new research from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.Adenotonsillectomy is the most commonly performed surgery in children, ranging from about 19 per 10,000 in Canada to 115 per 10,000 in the Netherlands.

Men and women who worked in a plant that processed vermiculite tainted with asbestos-like fibers that originated from a mine in Libby, Montana, show high prevalence of scarring and thickening of the membrane that lines the chest wall some 25 years after the plant stopped using the material even those who were exposed at or below current legal levels.