According to new statistics released by Chicago, there is a decline in the teen birth rate in the city although the number of teen pregnancies is still much higher than the national average.

The rate of teenagers having children declined 33 percent, according to a new report “Births in Chicago, 1999-2009.” It was noted by the report that the number of teen births is still 1.5 times higher than the national average, but that the decline is outpacing the national trend. In 2009, the teen birth rate per 1,000 females was 57, compared with 39 nationwide. This number was 85 per 1,000 in Chicago in the year 1999.

The report also indicated that 84 percent of women sought prenatal care during the first trimester of their pregnancies, an increase of 10 percent. Older women were also having more children, the report said. The report also found that the birth rates for women between the ages of 35 and 44 increased 40 percent. The Chicago Department of Public Health is working with Chicago Public Schools to further decrease teen pregnancy rates to pilot a new condom availability program, implement comprehensive sex education at all grade levels, and launch a city-wide public awareness campaign.

A new study has suggested that about half of all elementary school students can buy potato chips, ice cream, or similar snacks in vending machines and at snack bars during school.

Elementary school “is really a crucial period where the preferences and behavioral habits are being developed,” said Lindsey Turner, one of the study’s authors from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

“If kids are early on in that environment where that junk food is around, then it potentially becomes a habit that’s harder to break,” she told Reuters Health, adding that the new finding was “disappointing.”

“The community (and) the parents have to take a lot of responsibility as well,” Dr. Y. Claire Wang, who studies childhood nutrition and obesity at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York, said.

Scientists have claimed that they can identify dyslexia even before children start school, long before they become labeled as poor students and begin to lose confidence in themselves.

“We call it the dyslexia paradox,” said Nadine Gaab of the Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience at Children’s, whose study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Often, by the time they get a diagnosis, they usually have experienced three years of peers telling them they are stupid, parents telling them they are lazy. We know they have reduced self esteem. They are really struggling,” Gaab said in a telephone interview.

“The beauty is spoken language can present before written language so people can look for symptoms,” said Dr. Sally Shaywitz, a director of the Center for Dyslexia and Creativity at Yale University.

Signs of early dyslexia can include difficulty with rhyming, mispronouncing words or confusing similar-sounding words.

A new study has suggested that people engaging in activities such as reading and playing games throughout their lives may be lowering levels of a protein in their brains that is linked to Alzheimer’s disease.

“Staying cognitively active over the lifetime may reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s by preventing the accumulation of Alzheimer’s-related pathology,” said study author Susan Landau, a research scientist at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Some of the literature has hypothesized this finding, but this is the first study to report that lifetime cognitive activity is directly linked to amyloid deposition in the brain,” she said. “We think that cognitive activity is probably one of a variety of lifestyle practices — occupational, recreational and social activities — that may be important.”

The report was published in the Jan. 23 online edition of the Archives of Neurology.

A new study has found that an experimental anti-blood-clotting drug may serve as a replacement for other drugs such as Plavix in the days before heart surgery.

The study authors reported that the intravenous drug cangrelor appears to have the potential to serve as a “bridge” medication for heart patients to take in the several days before procedures like coronary artery bypass grafting.

“This drug is investigational, so it is not yet an option for patients to ask about,” Dr. Gregg Stone, a heart specialist and professor of medicine at Columbia University in New York City pointed out, “but if [the U.S. Food and Drug Administration] approved it, it would likely be widely used.”

The report was published in the Jan. 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.