成都专业治疗脉管畸形医院(成都检查前列腺肥大要多少钱) (今日更新中)

WASHINGTON, April 20 (Xinhua) -- Those childhood music lessons could pay off decades later -- even for those who no longer play an instrument -- by keeping the mind sharper as people age, according to a preliminary study published by the American Psychological Association (APA).The study recruited 70 healthy adults age 60 to 83 who were divided into groups based on their levels of musical experience. The musicians performed better on several cognitive tests than individuals who had never studied an instrument or learned how to read music, according to the research findings published Wednesday online in the APA journal Neuropsychology."Musical activity throughout life may serve as a challenging cognitive exercise, making your brain fitter and more capable of accommodating the challenges of aging," said lead researcher Brenda Hanna-Pladdy, a clinical neuropsychologist at the University of Kansas Medical Center. "Since studying an instrument requires years of practice and learning, it may create alternate connections in the brain that could compensate for cognitive declines as we get older."The three groups of study participants included individuals with no musical training; with one to nine years of musical study; or with at least 10 years of musical training. All of the participants had similar levels of education and fitness and didn' t show any evidence of Alzheimer's disease.All of the musicians were amateurs who began playing an instrument at about 10 years of age. More than half played the piano while approximately a quarter had studied woodwind instruments such as the flute or clarinet. Smaller numbers performed with stringed instruments, percussion or brass instruments.The high-level musicians who had studied the longest performed the best on the cognitive tests, followed by the low-level musicians and non-musicians, revealing a trend relating to years of musical practice. The high-level musicians had statistically significant higher scores than the non-musicians on cognitive tests relating to visuospatial memory, naming objects and cognitive flexibility, or the brain's ability to adapt to new information.The brain functions measured by the tests typically decline as the body ages and more dramatically deteriorate in neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's disease. The results "suggest a strong predictive effect of high musical activity throughout the lifespan on preserved cognitive functioning in advanced age," the study stated.Half of the high-level musicians still played an instrument at the time of the study, but they didn't perform better on the cognitive tests than the other advanced musicians who had stopped playing years earlier. This suggests that the duration of musical study was more important than whether musicians continued playing at an advanced age, Hanna-Pladdy says."Based on previous research and our study results, we believe that both the years of musical participation and the age of acquisition are critical," Hanna-Pladdy says. "There are crucial periods in brain plasticity that enhance learning, which may make it easier to learn a musical instrument before a certain age and thus may have a larger impact on brain development."The preliminary study was correlational, meaning that the higher cognitive performance of the musicians couldn't be conclusively linked to their years of musical study. More research is needed to explore that possible link.

BEIJING, March 22 (Xinhuanet) -- NASA scientists are testing its next-generation Mars rover, which will land on Mars next year, under extreme conditions at space-simulation chamber in California, media reports said Tuesday.Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., say they've installed the Curiosity rover in a space-simulation chamber that can mimic the environment the probe will encounter on Mars.  After the chamber's large door was sealed last week, air was pumped out to near-vacuum pressure, liquid nitrogen in the walls dropped the temperature to minus 130 degrees Celsius, and a bank of powerful lamps simulated the intensity of sunshine on Mars.After the test period, the rover along with other portions of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft including the cruise stage, descent stage and backshell -- part of protective covering -- will be shipped to the Kennedy Space Center for final preparation for the launch window from Nov. 25 to Dec. 18, 2011. Curiosity will study whether a selected area of Mars has offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life and for preserving evidence about whether Martian life has existed.

BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhuanet) -- U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced there was no new reason for safety concern in Pfizer Inc's Prevenar and Sanofi Aventis SA's ActHIBor vaccines, according to media reports Tuesday.Health agencies "have not detected new safety concerns or unusual reporting patterns" in the vaccines, which are used to prevent forms of meningitis and pneumonia, FDA spokeswoman Shelly Burgess said in an emailed statement.Health agencies in the United States will continue to monitor the vaccines for safety, the spokeswoman added.The Japanese health ministry had decided to suspend the vaccines after four unexplained deaths were reported. The causes of the deaths are still investigated, the Japanese ministry said in a release on its website.

BEIJING, Feb. 6 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice Premier Hui Liangyu on Sunday urged local authorities to intensify efforts to prevent forest fires.The senior Chinese official also ordered the country's forest fire prevention departments to come up with emergency response measures to be implemented as soon as fires break out.Hui warned that the country faced severe challenges from forest fires as the drought in the north continued and there was less rain than normal in the south in February.A total of 168 forest fires were recorded from Feb. 2 to Feb. 6, according to monitoring stations from the country's forest fire management authority.On Saturday, a forest blaze killed six people and left another three injured in east China's Zhejiang Province. Local officials said fireworks were the likely cause of the tragedy.

MEXICO CITY, May 18 (Xinhua) -- The Mexican government signed an agreement with the non-governmental group TRAFFIC on Tuesday to exchange information about illegal seizures of flora and fauna species in Mexico.The agreement with the wildlife trade monitoring network also called for the Mexican government to provide information on the routes used to transport such organic materials.The agreement was signed on the sideline of the 16th meeting of the Trilateral Committee for Wildlife and Ecosystem Conservation Management in the city of Oaxaca, south Mexico. Representatives of Canada, the United States and Mexico also attended the meeting.Among the list of 20,000 animals, vegetation and insects that TRAFFIC considers to be threatened by illegal trafficking worldwide, 2,500 of the organisms have their origins in Mexico. This amounts to 12 percent of the species most subject to buying, selling and transporting in the black market and threatens the survival of various ecosystems.The Mexican species that are listed among the most threatened by illegal trafficking are the cactus, orchids, reptiles, maguey plants, ferns, amphibians and fish.

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