3 August, 2015

Couples who Facebook together, stay together

Not just shopping together, couples who spend time together on Facebook tend to share a stronger bond and enjoy a longer-lasting relationship than those who avoid seeing each other online, an interesting study has revealed. Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that couples who were chatting on Facebook echoed those feelings in real life and were likely to have better marital ties. People tend to internalise what they say about themselves in public.

‘We were interested applying this to relationships and to the idea that if you declare your commitment publicly, you might perceive yourself as more committed to that partner,’ Catalina Toma, study co-author, told DailyDot.com. To reach this conclusion, the team asked questions to couples to find out details about their relationships and levels of commitment. Researchers also examined the ‘friendship activity’ of the couple on Facebook.

The team found that couples who continued to chat on the social networking site had a stronger relationship. ‘These publicly posted cues likely induced participants to perceive themselves as part of a romantic unit, thus cementing the relationship,’ she was quoted as saying. A recent study from global research firm Pew Research Centre discovered that more and more couples are joining Facebook. While 75 percent of parents log on to the social networking site daily, mothers tend to use Facebook more than fathers, it said. Nearly 37 percent of mothers check Facebook ‘frequently’ whereas only 20 percent of fathers check new posts.  

Source: www.thehealthsite.com

03.08.2015

Diagnosis of TB & asthma to get easy with this new lab-on-a-chip device

Researchers have developed a low-cost lab-on-a-chip device to analyse sputum from patients with pulmonary diseases such as tuberculosis and asthma.  ‘To develop more accurate diagnosis and treatment approaches for patients with pulmonary diseases, we have to analyse sample cells directly from the lungs rather than by drawing blood,’ said one of the inventors Tony Jun Huang, professor at the Pennsylvania State University in the US.

‘This (device) will offer quick analysis of samples without having to send them out to a centralised lab,’ said first author of the study Po-Hsun Huang from the Pennsylvania State University.  ‘This is the first on-chip sputum liquefier anyone has developed so far,’ Huang said.  There are several issues with the current standard method for sputum analysis.

The first is that human specimens can be contagious, and sputum analysis requires handling of specimens in several discrete machines.  With this device, all biospecimens are safely contained in a single disposable component.  Another issue is the sample size required for analysis in the current system, which is often larger than a person can easily produce.  The acoustofluidic sputum liquefier created by Huang’s group requires 100 times less sample while still providing accuracy equivalent to the standard system, the study said.

A further issue is that current systems are difficult to use and require trained operators.  With the lab-on-a-chip system, a nurse can operate the device with a touch of a few buttons and get a read out, or the patient could even operate the device at home, said the study published in the journal Lab on a Chip.

Source: www.thehealthsite.com

03.08.2015

Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish

Marcus Aurelius