Category Health/Medical

Exercise, alone or in combination with education, may reduce the risk of low back pain, a meta-analysis and review of medical literature suggests. Daniel Steffens, Ph.D., of the University of Sydney, Australia, and coauthors identified 23 published reports (on 21 different randomized clinical trials including 30,850 participants) that met their inclusion criteria.

Moderate-quality evidence suggests exercise combined with education reduces the risk of an episode of low back pain and low- to very low-quality evidence suggests exercise alone may reduce the risk of both a low back pain episode and the use of sick leave. Other interventions, including education alone, back belts and shoe inserts do not appear to be associated with the prevention of low back pain.

“Although our review found evi...

A nanophotonic incandescent light bulb demonstrates the ability to tailor light radiated by a hot object. Credit: Ognjen Ilic

How photonics can reshape the spectrum of light, and rehabilitate Edison’s light bulb along the way. The incandescent bulb is an example of a high temperature thermal emitter. It is very useful, but only a small fraction of the emitted light (and therefore energy) is used: most of the light is emitted in the infrared and in this context wasted. Now, MIT researchers describes another way to recycle light emitted at unwanted infrared wavelengths while optimizing the emission at useful visible wavelengths.

While as a proof-of-concept the research group built a more energy-efficient incandescent light bulb, the same approach could also be used to improve the performance...

Cheap Diclofenac has anti-cancer properties. Like other drugs examined by the ReDO project, diclofenac is cheap and readily accessible — and as it’s already present in many medicine cabinets, it has been carefully tested. The Repurposing Drugs in Oncology (ReDO) project, an international collaboration between the Anticancer Fund, Belgium, and US based GlobalCures, finds that existing and widely-used non-cancer drugs may represent a relatively untapped source of novel therapies for cancer.

Diclofenac is a well-known and widely used non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) used to treat pain in conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, as well as migraine, fever, acute gout and post-operative pain.

NSAIDs have shown promise in cancer prevention, but there is now emerging evidence that su...