The New York Times > Health > Repeat Caesareans Becoming Harder to Avoid: "Women around the country are finding that more and more hospitals that once allowed vaginal birth after Caesarean, or VBAC (commonly pronounced VEE-back), are now banning it and insisting on repeat Caesareans. About 300,000 women a year have repeat Caesareans. The rate of vaginal births in women who have had Caesareans has fallen by more than half, from 28.3 percent in 1996 to 10.6 percent in 2003."

Article: Stem cells rebuild bladder control�| New Scientist "Using a patient’s own stem cells to rebuild feeble bladder-control muscles may provide lasting relief from the embarrassing and inconvenient symptoms of urinary incontinence, a new study reveals.
Activity-induced incontinence - a tiny tinkle when a person laughs or jogs, for example - is very common, affecting an estimated 10% to 35% of women globally. Also called stress incontinence, the loss of control is due to shrinking muscles in the bladder, sphincter, and urethra wall and becomes more likely as women age. "

Stem cells help paralysed woman walk - World - www.smh.com.au: "Seoul: A South Korean woman paralysed for 20 years is walking again after scientists say they repaired her damaged spine using stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood.
Hwang Mi-soon, 37, had been bedridden since damaging her back in an accident. Last week she walked again with the help of a walking frame at a press conference where South Korea researchers announced the results of their stem cell therapy.
They said it was the world's first published case in which a patient with spinal cord injuries had been successfully treated with stem cells from umbilical cord blood."

The Bionic Back - Popular Science " For some of the 200,000 people each year who suffer pain severe enough to require lower-back surgery, a new solution has arrived. The Charité Artificial Disc is expected to receive FDA approval for degenerative disc disease by the end of 2004, making it the only artificial spinal disc available in the U.S. “This is the first major breakthrough in back surgery since the 1940s,” says orthopedic surgeon Richard Guyer of the Texas Back Institute in Plano. "

The New York Times > Science > New Tools to Help Patients Reclaim
Damaged Senses: "Using novel electronic aids, vision can be represented on the skin, tongue or through the ears. If the sense of touch is gone from one part of the body, it can be routed to an area where touch sensations are intact. Pilots confused by foggy conditions, in which the horizon disappears, can right their aircraft by monitoring sensations on the tongue or trunk. Surgeons can feel on their tongues the tip of a probe inside a patient's body, enabling precise movements.
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'We see with the brain, not with the eyes,' Dr. Bach-y-Rita said. 'You can lose your retina but you do not lose the ability to see as long as your brain is intact.'
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He found doorways, caught balls rolling toward him and with his small daughter played a game of rock, paper and scissors for the first time in more than 20 years. Mr. Weihenmayer said that, with practice, the substituted sense gets better, "as if the brain were rewiring itself.
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In one experiment, a leprosy patient who had lost the ability to experience touch with his fingers was outfitted with a glove containing contact sensors. These were coupled to skin on his forehead. Soon he experienced the data coming from the glove on his forehead, as if the feelings originated in his fingertips. He said he cried when he could touch and feel his wife's face."

BBC NEWS | Health | Poor diet linked to bad behaviour: "The University of Southern California found a lack of zinc, iron, vitamin B and protein in the first three years caused bad behaviour later on.
At eight years old, children fed poorly were more likely to be irritable and pick fights than those fed healthily.
Aged 11, they swore, cheated and got into fights, and at 17, they stole, bullied others and took drugs.
The researchers analysed the development of more than 1,000 children on Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Africa, over 14 years.
They found the more malnurished the children were, the greater the anti-social behaviour later on."

The New York Times > National > Some Like It Hot, but a New Pepper Is Bred for the Rest: "But for those who prize the fieriest domesticated Capsicum for its taste and health-boosting qualities, Dr. Crosby and the research station in the Rio Grande Valley have developed and patented the TAM Mild Habanero, with less than half the bite of the familiar jalape�"

Technology News: Health : Chocolate May Hold Cure for Coughs: "An ingredient in chocolate could be used to stop persistent coughs and lead to more effective medicines, researchers said.
The study found that theobromine -- a derivative found in cocoa -- was nearly a third more effective in stopping persistent coughs compared to codeine, which is currently considered the best cough medicine."

Article: Disrupted sleep causes worker 'burnout'�| New Scientist "Worker ‘burnout’ is triggered by a drastic re-setting of sleep patterns, rather than high levels of stress per se, according to a study of patients in Sweden. A new treatment based partly on these findings is among the first to show clear success, researchers say."

At the Intersection of Technology and the Body - Popular Science "O, the irony. Researchers at Nike have found a way to improve your running speed. The catch? You have to train in bare feet. The idea is that barefoot running strengthens feet that have been coddled, pampered, and isolated from their traditional contact with the ground. That won’t sell a lot of shoes, though, so the company came up with the Free 5.0, which provides all the benefits of being barefoot without the distracting shards of broken glass. "

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: Speaking Tonal Languages Promotes Perfect Pitch "Deutsch suggests that for students who speak a tonal language, acquiring absolute pitch is like learning a second language, which becomes much more difficult after a “critical period” of development. For students who speak a nontonal language such as English, however, absolute pitch is more like a first language, for which the critical period occurs at a much younger age."

Article: Totally artificial hearts offer hope�| New Scientist "But artificial heart technology has improved dramatically since then – so much so that last week the US Food and Drug Administration approved for the first time a “total artificial heart” (TAH), designed to fully replace a patient’s diseased heart until a donor heart becomes available. Called the CardioWest, it is made by SynCardia Systems of Tuscon, Arizona, and is a redesign of the device Clark received and has been through nine years of trials."