5 . The Heimlich Maneuver Guideline

In the early 1970s, Henry J. Heimlich, MD, developed a first aid technique for choking, known as the Heimlich maneuver.     1     He was shocked to learn that choking was a leading cause of death, especially in children under 3 years of age.

Knowing when to use the Heimlich maneuver can be vital in emergency situations. If a person appears unable to speak or starts motioning toward their throat, they are likely choking.     2    

The National Safety Council provides the following steps to help a person who is choking, if they are still conscious. First of all, stand behind the person with one leg forward between the person’s legs. And then, put your arms around the person and locate their belly button. Place the thumb side of one fist against the stomach just above their belly button.     3     Once the object is expelled out, the choking victim will get more time to wait for the medical staff to arrive.

Avoid giving small kids hard candy, ice cubes, and popcorn. Cut foods that kids can easily choke on into tiny pieces. This can include grapes and other fruit, raw carrots, hot dogs, and chunks of cheese. Avoid laughing or talking while chewing and swallowing.

    5     It happens so suddenly and immediate help is needed. Learning how to perform the Heimlich maneuver correctly can help save a life. After the choking event resolves, be sure to seek medical attention for the person who chokes.

6 . Chinese researchers have revealed the anti-cancer characteristic of neutrophils (中性粒细胞) — a type of white blood cells—and the related molecular regulation mechanism, providing new insights into cancer diagnosis and treatment. The discovery, made by researchers at the Shanghai Institute of Immunity and Infection under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Fudan University, was published in Cell on Tuesday.

Neutrophils are the most abundant white blood cells in the human body. As the first line of defence against infections, they play a key role in anti-infection immunity. The researchers collected neutrophils from 143 patients with 17 different types of cancer and analyzed them. They revealed that neutrophils can adopt at least 10 highly specialized and distinct functional states related to inflammation (炎症) , blood vessel formation and—most excitingly—presenting antigens (抗体) to activate powerful cancer-killing T cells.

“We were surprised to find such complexity and different roles within neutrophils, which have been ignored for so long,” said Zhang Xiaoming, a researcher at the Institute. “What is especially remarkable is their newly discovered capacity to act as antigen-presenting cells, gathering T cells against cancer. In addition, the abundance of antigen-presenting neutrophils is associated with improved condition across many cancer types revealed in this study,” he said.

“This completely changes how we perceive neutrophils in the context of cancer,” said Gao Qiang, a professor at Fudan University. “Now we know we could employ the diverse hidden identities of neutrophils to strengthen the effectiveness of immunotherapy (免疫疗法). We’re thrilled to further explore the potential benefits of these newly uncovered mechanisms in clines.”

The study emphasizes the value of single-cell sequencing approaches to reveal new functional dimension even within seemingly well-understood immune cells. Tapping into the hidden potential of neutrophils may provide new insights into cancer diagnosis and treatment.

7 . Using a headset at home to deliver a low electrical current to the brain can relieve symptoms of depression. The approach, called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), is effective when used several times a week for half an hour at a time.

Previous trials have shown that the therapy works under medical supervision in a clinic or lab. Now, a randomised trial has demonstrated that a tDCS headset can also reduce depression symptoms when worn at home.

Several forms of electrical brain stimulation may have the potential to treat depression. With tDCS, sponge electrodes are placed on the left and right sides of the forehead, causing a mild current to flow from the left to the right. This makes brain cells on the left side more likely to fire, with some studies suggesting that activity in this region is low in people with depression.

Repeated sessions of stimulation may lead to longer term changes in the brain cells, increasing their activity levels, says team member Cynthia Fu at the University of East London. Affecting activity in this region probably alters activity in multiple areas, she says. “There are probably many brain regions causing depression.”

To see if people can benefit from using such a device at home, the team randomly assigned 174 people with moderate or severe depression to receive either a full session of stimulation from the headset or stimulation from the same device that lasted just a few seconds. People felt their skin aching at the start and end of each session.

While the depression symptoms of both groups improved on a 52-point scale, those who got the real treatment showed the most benefit, by about 9 points compared with 7, a degree of difference that is similar to that seen with antidepressants (抗抑郁药), “We found people liked having it at home,” says Fu. “Participants could build it into their day.”

8 . Vitamin D was recognized a century ago as the cure for rickets, a childhood disease that causes weak bones. Then, in the early 2000s, a pile of studies suggested that low vitamin D levels could be a factor in cancer, cardiovascular (心血管) disease, Parkinson’s disease and so on. This simple vitamin seemed to be a cure for whatever troubled us. However, all these observational studies have a fundamental weakness: they can identify a co-occurrence between vitamin D and a disease, but they can’t prove there is a cause-and-effect relation.

To look at whether taking vitamin D had curative effects, Manson and her team started the world’s largest and most far-reaching randomized vitamin D trial. The study followed nearly 26,000 healthy adults, randomized to receive either 2,000 international units (IU) of vitamin D or a placebo (安慰剂), for an average of 5.3 years. The volunteers were almost evenly split between men and women, and 20 percent of the participants were black.

The results came as a shock. Not only did vitamin D not reduce rates of cancer or heart disease, but the trial also found that vitamin D did not prevent or improve cognitive function, or reduce the risk of bone fractures (骨折). The finding about fractures “was a real surprise to many people,” Manson says.

In 2011, the Institute of Medicine established an expert committee to conduct a thorough analysis of all existing studies on vitamin D and health. The committee concluded that the bone-strengthening benefits of vitamin D remain steady when blood levels reach 12 to 16 nanograms per millililter. They also found that there were no benefits to having levels above 20ng/ml. According to measurements of vitamin D levels in the general U. S. population, most had levels of 20 ng/ml or more in 2011. Levels have actually risen since then, meaning that most people don’t need to take extra vitamin D.

The ups and downs of vitamin D offer a lesson in humility. The relation between the vitamin and disease is far more complicated than it first seemed and a reminder that scientific understanding is always developing over time.

10 . Researchers discovered a new function for a common protein in the brain—a development that throws new light on the mysteries of the mind and holds promising implications for the treatment of memory loss and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The protein, called RPT6, normally performs necessary housekeeping in the brain’s hippocampus (海马体) by working as part of a larger protein complex called the proteasome to destroy other proteins. But researchers in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ School of Animal Sciences recently noticed this protein behaving in a previously undetected way.

“We have found that RPT6 is capable of this completely different function where it can combine with DNA and increase the expression of other genes or proteins during memory formation,” said Tim Jarome, associate professor of neurobiology. “This indicates that RPT6 plays a dual (双重的) role in memory formation, both inside and outside the proteasome complex.”

Gene expression is critical to memory formation. It helps to build the neural networks needed to form and strengthen memories. The discovery, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, opens up new avenues for exploration of how RPT6 functions in the brain and how it can be controlled to improve memory and reduce the harm of memory disorders like PTSD.

Researchers don’t yet understand why RPT6 has this dual function or how it is helping to control the cells that form a memory. “There has to be something else that’s working with it to control gene expression,” Jarome said. “We are trying to understand now how it’s doing that.”

Hopefully, the discovery will be helpful to the ongoing research in Jarome’s lab, which focuses on understanding and treating memory disorders.

“The discovery of RPT6’s new function is leading us somewhere new in revealing the complexities of the brain and how we learn and store memories,” said research scientist Kayla Farrell. “We believe that this will help to inform new directions into understanding how gene expression is controlled during memory. In the long term, this could lead to potential treatment of controlling and improving memory.”