Violent video games, movies make people insensitive towards other's sufferings

Washington: People who play violent video games become insensitive towards the pain and suffering of others, according to new research.
Detailing the findings of two studies conducted by University of Michigan professor Brad Bushman, and Iowa State University professor Craig Anderson, the research fill an important gap in the literature on the impact of violent media.
Past studies demonstrated that exposure to violent media produces physiological desensitisation-lowering heart rate and skin conductance-when viewing scenes of actual violence a short time later.
However, the current research has shown that violent media also affects a person's willingness to offer help to an injured person, both in a field study as well as in a laboratory experiment.
"These studies clearly show that violent media exposure can reduce helping behavior," said Bushman, professor of psychology and communications and a research professor at the U-M Institute for Social Research.
He added: "People exposed to media violence are less helpful to others in need because they are 'comfortably numb' to the pain and suffering of others, to borrow the title of a Pink Floyd song."
In a study of 320 college students, the participants played either a violent or a non-violent video game for approximately 20 minutes, and then after a few minutes overheard a staged fight that ended with the "victim" sustaining a sprained ankle and groaning in pain.
It was found that those who had played a violent game took significantly longer to help the victim than those who played a non-violent game-73 seconds compared to 16 seconds.
Also, people who had played a violent game were less likely to notice and report the fight. And in case they did report it, they judged it to be less serious than did those who had played a non-violent game.
In the second study, the participants were 162 adult moviegoers. The researchers staged a minor emergency outside the theatre in which a young woman with a bandaged ankle and crutches "accidentally" dropped her crutches and struggled to retrieve them.
Participants who had just watched a violent movie took over 26 percent longer to help than either people going into the theatre or people who had just watched a non-violent movie.
The findings of the study have been published in the journal Psychological Science.

Mending broken hearts with skin stem cells possible

Washington: After turning skin cells back into stem cells successfully, scientists now have proof that they can indeed form specialised cells making up heart muscle.
University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-M) School of Medicine and Public Health professor Tim Kamp and his research team showed that they were able to grow working heart-muscle cells (cardiomyocytes) from induced pluripotent stem cells, known as iPS cells.
The heart cells were originally reprogrammed from human skin cells by James Thomson and Junying Yu, two of Kamp's co-authors on the study.
"It's an encouraging result because it shows that those cells will be useful for research and may someday be useful in therapy," said Kamp, who is also a cardiologist with UW Health.
"If you have a heart failure patient who is in dire straits - and there are never enough donor hearts for transplantation, we may be able to make heart cells from the patient's skin cells, and use them to repair heart muscle. That's pretty exciting."
It's also a few more discoveries away. The researchers used a virus to insert four transcription factors into the genes of the skin cell, reprogramming it back to an embryo-like state.
Because the virus is taken up by the new cell, there is a possibility it eventually could cause cancer, so therapies from reprogrammed skin cells will likely have to wait until new methods are perfected.
Still, the iPS cardiomyocytes should prove immediately useful for research. And Kamp said the speed at which knowledge is progressing is very encouraging.
Jianhua Zhang, study co-author noted that it took 17 years, from when a mouse embryonic stem cells were first created in 1981, to 1998, when Thomson created the first human embryonic stem cells, said a UW-M release.
In contrast, the first mouse iPS stem cells were created in 2006, and Thomson and Yu published their paper in November 2007, announcing the creation of human iPS stem cells that began as a skin cells.
The study was published online Thursday in Circulation Research, a journal of the American Heart Association.

Potential new treatment for prostate cancer developed

Washington: Scientists at Melbourne's Burnet Institute claim to have developed a potential new treatment for prostate cancer patients.
The team led by Associate Professor Pei Xiang Xing, head of the Burnet Institute's Cancer Immunotherapy, has produced a monoclonal antibody to a unique tumour marker for the treatment of prostate cancer.
The monoclonal antibody is directed at cancer-producing cells carrying the specific molecule known as PIM-1, which is responsible for cell survival, proliferation and differentiation.
Over-expression of PIM-1 plays a critical role in the development, progression and metastasis of prostate cancer and other cancers such as leukaemia.
The researchers found that the monoclonal antibody significantly inhibited cancer cell growth when used in laboratory models of prostate cancer.
During the study, the team demonstrated that the monoclonal antibody binds to PIM-1 present in cancer cells and creates a chain of events leading to the death of the cells.
Moreover, the therapeutic effect was improved by combination of the antibody with other drugs currently used to treat prostate cancer.
"This is an exciting step in the development of new treatments for patients with prostate cancer with very promising laboratory-test results," said Professor Crabb.

Three simple steps to treat erectile dysfunction

Washington: Is erectile dysfunction taking the joy out of your sex life? Take heart, for Temple urologist Jack Mydlo has offered three simple steps to get back the pleasure - cut back on fat, control cholesterol, and kick the butt.
Men often rely on the "little blue pill" to score in the bedroom but following these three simple steps can improve their performance without a visit to the doctor or a drugstore.
After diabetes and high blood pressure the next culprit in the line for erectile dysfunction (ED) is cigarette.
"The number one thing we can do to stop erectile dysfunction is to stop smoking. It's the number one environmental cause of ED in our society," said Mydlo.
It restricts the blood flow to the penis. He said it takes 12 to 24 months for better function once you quit the habit.
Men with high cholesterol are at two fold risk of developing ED.
"Men with a cholesterol level of 240 or higher have almost a twofold increase of ED compared to a man who has lower cholesterol numbers," said Mydlo.
High levels of cholesterol lead to plaque buildup in tubes (in the penis and arteries, which can greatly reduce blood flow.
Obesity is to blame not only for men with self-esteem issues involving their appearance, but also their performance.
"Adipose tissue in body fat converts testosterone to estrogen, and lower levels of testosterone can make it difficult for a man to achieve an erection, no matter how many pills they take," said Mydlo.
Losing weight will improve the testosterone to estrogen ratio, which may improve sex drive, or libido, as well as erections. It also decreases cholesterol, which will help improve blood flow.