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WEDNESDAY, Aug. 23, 2023 (American Heart Association News) -- Patricia Guevara enjoys doing things with her 5-year-old daughter, Miranda, especially painting and drawing and taking an occasional walk in the park.After a promotora, or community health worker, stopped by their Pittsburgh-area home, their lives became more active.Guevara signed up for a promotora-led program for Latino preschoolers and their families. Through the home-based pilot program, University of Pittsburgh researchers sought to study how community health workers affected physical activity among Latino families with young children."I thought it was great because we made a commitment to be physically active at least five days a week," said Guevara, who moved to Pennsylvania from Venezuela seven years ago.Promotores,...

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 23, 2023 (American Heart Association News) -- As a Japanese American girl growing up in Irvine, California, Marisa Hamamoto felt like an outsider in her predominantly white community. Her schoolmates picked on her because she looked different. She wasn't one of them.But when she entered the dance studio, everything changed."I discovered at an early age that dance can unite us," she said. "I was the only girl of color, but moving my body to the music made me feel like I belonged. I was part of a community in dance class."As she entered her teen years, she dreamed of becoming a professional ballerina. But as her body matured, she faced a new set of challenges. "I didn't quite have the right body for ballet," she said. "I was too curvy. And my joints were too tight. I was...

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 23, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- Many people with Lou Gehrig’s disease, also called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), first start to lose the ability to move their arms and legs.That's not Pat Bennett. She can move just fine. She can still dress herself, and she can even use her fingers to type.But ALS has robbed Bennett, 68, of her ability to speak. She can no longer use the muscles of her lips, tongue, larynx and jaw to make the sounds that add up to speech.“When you think of ALS, you think of arm and leg impact,” Bennett wrote in an interview conducted by email. “But in a group of ALS patients, it begins with speech difficulties. I am unable to speak.”New brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are being developed to restore communication for folks like Bennett,...

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 23, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- An international research team has achieved the first complete sequencing of the human Y chromosome, which is closely linked to male development.This is the last of the human chromosomes to be fully sequenced, an effort that may shed light on everything from fertility to disease.The work was led by the Telomere-to-Telomere (T2T) Consortium, which is a team of researchers funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) in Bethesda, Md., part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.The new sequence fills in gaps across more than 50% of the Y chromosome’s length.The research, published Aug. 23 in Nature, uncovered important genomic features, including factors in sperm production.While both the X and Y chromosomes have a...