HEALTH AND SCIENCE HIGHLIGHTS

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May 31, 2017 (San Diego’s East County) -- Our Health and Science Highlights provide cutting-edge news that could impact your health and our future.

HEALTH

SCIENCE & TECH

For excerpts and links to full stories, click “read more” and scroll down.

HEALTH

Study finds 73% of sunscreens don’t even work – how to find one that does (Atlanta Journal Constitution)

 If you’re spending hours in the sun this summer, sunscreen is a must. But according to a new report, nearly three quarters of all sunscreen products on the market don’t actually work or could potentially cause more harm.

Autism symptoms of five boys increase improve in early trial of century-old drug (San Diego Union-Tribune)

Autism symptoms improved in five boys given a century-old drug for sleeping sickness, according to a new study led by University of California San Diego researchers. The small clinical trial involved 10 boys, including five who received a placebo and did not show improvement. Those that received a single infusion of the drug, suramin, showed significantly better functioning in language, behavior and willingness to socialize.

Parents discuss how autistic children improved after receiving experimental drug (SDUT)

Parents of five boys who received an experimental treatment for autism describe the results in remarks provided by UC San Diego Health.

Zika detected in India for first time(Associated Press)

India has reported three cases of the Zika virus for the first time, including two pregnant women who delivered healthy babies.

Fitness trackers poor at measuring calories burned (BBC)

Most fitness trackers are good at measuring heart rate but poor at measuring calories burned, a study suggests. As a result, people should be cautious about using them to judge what to eat, Stanford University scientists said.

Thousands of known bugs found in pacemaker codes (BBC)

Pacemakers, insulin pumps and other devices in hospitals harbour security problems that leave them vulnerable to attack, two separate studies warn.

Trump's Medicaid 'Cuts' Actually Increase Federal Spending (Reason)

Under his budget proposal, Medicaid spending would rise from $378 billion this year to $524 billion in 2027. That's a 38 percent nominal increase.

Zika struck Florida up to 40 times before detection (San Diego Union-Tribune)

Zika was circulating in the Americas long before the first reports arose of the virus, which can cause microcephaly in fetuses, according to a series of major international studies published Wednesday.

SCIENCE & TECH

Mark Zuckerberg’s great American road trip (New York Times)

In March, Mark Zuckerberg visited the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., the site of a mass murder by a white supremacist. Last month, he went to Dayton, Ohio, to sit down with recovering opioid addicts at a rehabilitation center. And he spent an afternoon in Blanchardville, Wis., with Jed Gant, whose family has owned a dairy and beef cattle farm for six generations. These were all stops along a road trip by Mr. Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, across the United States this year. His goal: to visit every state in the union and learn more about a sliver of the nearly two billion people who regularly use the social network.

Google plans to track credit card spending (BBC)

Google is planning to track billions of credit and debit card sales to compare online ad clicks with money spent offline. Google Attribution will allow advertisers to see whether online ad campaigns generate offline sales.  Announcing the service, Google said that it captures around 70% of credit and debit card transactions in the US.

NASA’s Jupiter mission reveals the ‘brand new and unexpected’ (New York Times)

Observations taken from the first few orbits of the Juno spacecraft provide a glimpse of the interior, the poles and the equator of the solar system’s largest planet.


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