Latest Thermoregulation Stories

More than 6,200 people are hospitalized each summer due to excessive heat and the poor, uninsured and elderly are at highest risk, U.S. officials said. A report by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said about 180 people who were hospitalized for heat exposure in 2005 died. Severe heat exposure -- hyperthermia -- occurs when body temperatures rise to 106 degrees or more. Heat exhaustion symptoms range from nausea and...

RESEDA, Calif., June 30 /PRNewswire/ -- As heat waves plague much of the United States with the hottest days yet to come, the medical director for the famed nonprofit Los Angeles Jewish Home -- one of the country's largest single-source provider of senior housing in Los Angeles -- has offered tips for the nation's elderly to avoid the health dangers of extreme heat. Each year in the United States, about 200 people die of health problems caused by high heat and humidity. Most of the victims...

Whether in Canada or the Caribbean, tree leaves don't have to worry about the temperature outside - they have their own built-in climate control that always aims to keep them comfortable, a new study finds. The long-standing view of plant biologists was that the temperature of a photosynthesizing leaf would be the same as that of the surrounding air. But in a survey of 39 tree species ranging over 50 degrees of latitude across North America (between Puerto Rico and Canada),...

The temperature inside a healthy, photosynthesizing tree leaf is affected less by outside environmental temperature than originally believed, according to new research from biologists at the University of Pennsylvania.Surveying 39 tree species ranging in location from subtropical to boreal climates, researchers found a nearly constant temperature in tree leaves. These findings provide new understanding of how tree branches and leaves maintain a homeostatic temperature considered ideal for...

Heart rate and metabolism drop, while blood pressure and oxygen levels maintainedLow doses of the toxic gas responsible for the unpleasant odor of rotten eggs can safely and reversibly depress both metabolism and aspects of cardiovascular function in mice, producing a suspended-animation-like state. In the April 2008 issue of the journal Anesthesiology, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers report that effects seen in earlier studies of hydrogen sulfide do not depend on a reduction...

LOUISVILLE, Colo., Feb. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- The hospitals rated the nation's best by U.S. News & World Report are committed to quality patient care. Three of the top five, and more than a third of the 14 who made the list, have something else in common. They use the innovative non-invasive Arctic Sun(R) Temperature Management device to chill critically ill patients, potentially reducing brain damage. The Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic, and the Massachusetts General Hospital -- ranked...

Bethesda, MD -- March of the Penguins, the Oscar® winning documentary, showed how the emperor penguins endure their incubation and fast for four dark and bitterly cold months each year. The tight huddling among these South Pole penguins is a key energy-saving mechanism that allows them to endure their extremely harsh conditions. A team of scientists that had already shown that emperor penguins who are free ranging in their colony spend about 50 percent of their time in dense huddles and...

A fascinating new study in the January/February 2007 issue of Physiological and Biochemical Zoology looks at the benefits of huddling vs. solitude, comparing strategies used by striped skunks to get through long, cold winters in northern climates. While most male skunks den underground alone during the winter, a group of female skunks will often snuggle together with one male in communal dens.Yeen Ten Hwang (University of Western Ontario) and coauthors found that skunks that choose to go it...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Cooling down before warming up may help exercisers keep going during the dog days of summer, according to a small study. Researchers found that when they outfitted male cyclists with special "precooling" garments before a workout in the heat and humidity, the athletes showed cooler body temperatures, lower heart rates and less sweating. The cool down came courtesy of shirts and pants with tubing that allowed cold water to run through the clothes. Other...

If you think dinosaurs are hot today, just think back to about 110 million years ago when they really ran hot and heavy. One of the larger animals, a behemoth called Sauroposeidon proteles, weighed close to 120,000 pounds as an adult. Now, a new study led by the University of Florida suggests it may have had a body temperature close to 48 degrees Celsius.That is a 118-degree Fahrenheit normal temperature, about as hot as most living creatures can get before the proteins in their bodies...