EMBARGOED FOR PUBLICATION OR BROADCAST UNTIL 00:01 GMT ON 28th January

Issue 87

January 2008

Welcome to the 87th edition of Flash, our bi-weekly alert for science, health and medical journalists. Flash is a courtesy service with access to ScienceDirect, Elsevier’s online platform, providing full text access to some 2,000 scientific, technical and medical journals.

If you report a story, we would ask that you credit Elsevier’s journal as the source.

Please use your Flash login and password to access each article’s full text on ScienceDirect. For a new password, forgotten passwords or if you have any feedback, please contact Anna Hogrebe at newsroom@elsevier.com or at +31 20 485 3269.

ARTICLES

1. CHILD ABUSE AND NEGLECT SHOWN TO BE STRONG RISK FACTORS FOR FUTURE ADOLESCENT BINGE DRINKING

Adolescent binge drinking – typically defined as the consumption of five or more alcoholic drinks on a single occasion at least once every two weeks – continues to be a major public health problem. Not only is it dangerous, but it is also associated with a number of other adverse outcomes like obesity, high blood pressure, unwanted and unprotected sexual activity, unsafe driving practices … the list goes on and on. So what leads our youth down this perilous path?

In Elsevier’s new issue of Addictive Behaviors, researchers take a closer look at this phenomenon and assess if childhood maltreatment (i.e. sexual abuse, physical abuse, neglect) is linked to adolescent binge drinking. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, 12,748 adolescents were sampled and asked a series of questions about their drinking behaviours and if they had experienced any maltreatment by the time they had started sixth grade.

Among those reporting any maltreatment, 12.4 percent reported binge drinking compared to 9.9 percent reporting no instances of maltreatment. Especially in the cases where multiple types of maltreatment had occurred, the likelihood of adolescent binge drinking was even greater. Previous research has also revealed that when multiple types of maltreatment co-occur, greater developmental difficulties such as emotional and behavioural problems often increase. This new study adds to this body of work, showing specifically that adolescent binge drinking can also be an outcome.

——————————

2. STRAWBERRIES PROVE TO BE A SWEET SOLUTION IN A CHOLESTEROL-LOWERING DIET

Who couldn’t benefit from eating a more healthy diet? With heart disease, sky-high cholesterol and obesity on the rise in most parts of the world, everyone could do with listening to a few heart-healthy dietary tips. In Elsevier’s Metabolism, researchers give big points for eating more strawberries.

By focusing specifically on 28 hyperlipidemic subjects who had already followed a dietary portfolio consisting of soy, viscous fibre, plant sterol and nuts for approximately 2.5 years, researchers divided the group and instructed one group to receive supplements of strawberries and the other additional oat bran bread for one month.

Results showed strawberry supplementation reduced the oxidative damage to LDL while maintaining reductions in blood lipids and enhancing diet palatability. This provides further merit to the notion that added fruit can improve the overall utility of diets designed to lower coronary heart disease risk.

——————————

3. READERS COMMENT ON WHAT DRAWS THEM TO A NEWSPAPER HEADLINE

What constitutes an effective newspaper headline? Is it funny, ambiguous, metaphorical, thought-provoking, informative, short, long? In Elsevier’s Journal of Pragmatics, researcher Elly Ifantidou takes on this very topic, trying to learn of “appropriate headlines” from the writer’s perspective and how they converge with “effective headlines” from the reader’s perspective.

Drawing on 137 readers’ reactions to a selection of UK/US newspaper headlines, as well as a corpus of 1,310 reader-selected headlines, a wealth of information is presented to illustrate what elements and characteristics exist in a good headline – at least in terms of what the readers believe and want in that simple bold-typed statement. Not surprisingly, Ifantidou discovered that readers in this sample tended to disregard standard norms like length, clarity and information and instead favoured headlines that riveted their attention in terms of creative style.

Additionally, statistical analysis showed that readers were interested in the type of information conveyed, wishing to see headlines that addressed “familiar” topics which relate to their “background knowledge” and “interests” in specific domains. Together, these findings reinforce the view that headlines are better examined – and perhaps designed – as autonomous texts, rather than as mirror-images of the stories they traditionally introduce.

——————————

4. TIPS FOR MANAGING JET LAG WHEN PERFORMANCE IS ESSENTIAL

No one likes jet lag, but for politicians, frequent business travellers and people in fields like the military it simply comes with the job. So what can be done to manage the symptoms and ensure optimal performance when you arrive to your next destination?

In the forthcoming Special issue on Jet Lag, Elsevier’s Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease, authors Olivier Coste and Didier Lagarde detail what happens to the body after a long-lasting transmeridian flight, as well as potential management strategies and physiological countermeasures that can be utilised to keep jet lag symptoms to a minimum and body performance to the max.

At the most basic level, they suggest doing everything you can to plan your journey correctly to avoid stress. Do things like get a good night’s sleep before the journey, pick the right flight, find a seating solution that offers a sufficient level of comfort and avoiding alcohol and tobacco consumption. Beyond those steps, travellers can also look to pharmacological aids to counteract jet lag – something that can help passengers restore an adapted wake-sleep rhythm as quickly as possible. Exogenous melatonin, for example, can increase skin temperature, which constitutes an effective signal for sleepiness. Several hypnotic drugs can also promote sleep. To promote wakefulness, drugs like caffeine, amphetamines and eugregorics can be used.

The authors conclude that only the passengers who stay for a long time in a foreign country may have a significant benefit to manipulating their body clocks. In some cases, in fact, rapid resynchronisation is not useful and can lead to chronic internal desynchronisation.

——————————–

1. doi:10.1016/j.addbeh.2008.10.023
2. doi:10.1016/j.metabol.2008.07.018
3. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2008.10.016
4. doi:10.1016/j.tmaid.2008.08.004