Beer, when used as a marinade, can help reduce the formation of potentially harmful cancer-causing substances in grilled meats, scientists have found.

Previous studies have shown an association between consumption of grilled meats and a high incidence of colorectal cancer.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are substances that can form when meats are cooked at very high temperatures, like on a backyard grill.

High levels of PAHs, which are also in cigarette smoke and car exhaust, are associated with cancers in laboratory animals, although it is uncertain if that is true for people.

Beer, wine or tea marinades can reduce the levels of some potential carcinogens in cooked meat, but little was known about how different beer marinades affect PAH levels, until now.

The researchers, from the University of Vigo in Spain and University of Porto in Portugal, grilled samples of pork marinated for four hours in Pilsner beer, non-alcoholic Pilsner beer or a black beer ale, to well-done on a charcoal grill.

Black beer had the strongest effect, reducing the levels of eight major PAHs by more than half compared with unmarinated pork.

"Thus, the intake of beer marinated meat can be a suitable mitigation strategy," researchers said.

The study appears in American Chemical Society's Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Researchers in Germany have created an implantable device that reduces blood pressure by sending electrical signals to the brain.

The device has successfully reduced the blood pressure in rats by 40 percent without any major side effects, and could offer hope for a significant proportion of patients worldwide who do not respond to existing medical treatment for the condition.

The device consists of 24 individual electrodes that are integrated into a micro-machined cuff. It is designed to wrap around the vagal nerve, which extends from the brainstem to the thorax and abdomen, supplying and stimulating various major organs including the heart and major blood vessels.

The device works by picking up signals from specific sensors, known as baroreceptors, which are activated when blood vessels stretch. Some baroreceptors are grouped together in concentrated areas in the aortic arch and report their information to the brainstem via fibres in the vagal nerve. These baroreceptors function to control short-term fluctuations in blood pressure.

The device has been designed to identify only those fibres that influence the blood pressure and avoid those that are responsible for heart rate, the power of heart beat, ventilation and other vital functions.

The results have been published in IOP Publishing's Journal of Neural Engineering.

The Rwandan government Tuesday launched a $329 million plan to stop malaria deaths in the country by 2018.

The Rwanda Malaria Strategic Plan is a public health campaign to be coordinated by the Rwanda Biomedical Centre geared at eradicating the disease that claimed the lives of more than 400 people last year, according to Xinhua.

The campaign launched in Kigali focuses on encouraging all Rwandans to sleep under an insecticide-treated mosquito net, rapid testing and treatment by community health workers within 24 hours of a patient showing signs of malaria and close monitoring of the disease by health personnel.

Speaking at the launch, Corine Karema, director of the malaria division at the Rwanda Biomedical Centre, insisted that mosquito nets remain the best way to prevent malaria infection.

"With massive distribution of mosquito nets we notice a 50 percent reduction in infections," Karema told reporters.

She explained that free mosquito nets are given to children under five when they visit a health centre for their measles vaccination and to expectant mothers during prenatal checks.

Meanwhile, Sylvia Muteteli, who works on malaria community outreach with Urunana Development Communication said some people shun sleeping under mosquito nets for various reasons ranging from allergies claims to inconvenience to use.

Muteteli said her organisation, which played a role in developing the strategic plan, tries to discourage the reluctance through radio plays to raise awareness on the importance of sleeping under a mosquito net.

She, however, appealed to local leaders to get more involved in the malaria prevention effort.

There will be a concerted effort to have more community leaders involved in awareness on malaria prevention and treatment, according to Karema.

In 2011 only 210,000 malaria cases were reported in Rwanda. This led people to believe malaria was no longer a threat, Alphonse Rukundo, an epidemiologist specialising in malaria said at the launch.

The Rwanda Malaria Strategic Plan will be funded by the government of Rwanda and the US president's Malaria Initiative and Global Fund.

Researchers have said that gardening can not only enhance home and community landscapes and provide low-cost food sources, the level of physical activity required also offers a multitude of health benefits to young adults.

Studies have confirmed that engaging in gardening can lower cholesterol and blood pressure, and increase psychological well-being.

Researchers from Konkuk University and Hongik University in Seoul, South Korea, published a study in HortTechnology that evaluated the intensity of gardening activities for adults in their 20s.

Study's lead author Ki-Cheol Son said that the exercise intensity of physical activity may differ between age groups and fitness levels, and there was not enough data on the metabolic equivalents of gardening tasks in different age groups to develop a garden exercise program for maintaining or improving health conditions.

Fifteen university students in their 20s participated in the study in South Korea. Each subject performed 10 common gardening tasks in a high tunnel and in a nearby grassy area with a vegetable garden and weeds.

The subjects visited the garden plot twice and performed five gardening tasks during each visit; each task lasted for 5 minutes and was followed by a 5-minute rest. Subject wore a portable telemetric calorimeter and respired into the facemask during the gardening tasks and resting periods so researchers could measure their oxygen uptake.

The subjects also wore a heart rate monitor to record heart rate data during the gardening tasks and resting periods via radiotelemetry.

The research team evaluated the data and determined that all 10 gardening tasks were "moderate- to high-intensity" physical activities for the research subjects. Planting transplants, mixing growing medium, watering, harvesting, sowing, hoeing, mulching, raking, and weeding were all classified as "moderate intensity", while digging was a found to be a "high-intensity" activity and was the most intense task in study.

Researchers have shown that risk for congenital anomalies is highest among babies born to older women who smoke.

The authors of this study used birth certificate data and hospital discharge records from Washington state to determine if maternal smoking during the first trimester of pregnancy is linked to heart defects and if so, what types of defects.

Lead author Patrick M. Sullivan, MD, FAAP, clinical fellow in pediatric cardiology at Seattle Children's Hospital and a master's student in epidemiology at the University of Washington School of Public Health, said I care for kids with complex congenital heart disease on a daily basis, and I see these kids and their families enduring long hospitalizations and often sustaining serious long-term complications as a result of their disease.

Sullivan said usually, the cause of a heart defect is unknown. I saw this research as an opportunity to study what might be a preventable cause of congenital heart defects.

Using hospital discharge records, researchers identified 14,128 children born with a variety of heart defects from 1989-2011. They matched these cases to 62,274 children without heart defects born in the same year.

Then, they compared the proportion of children with heart defects whose mothers reported smoking during pregnancy to the proportion of children without heart defects whose mothers smoked. Mothers' smoking status, as well as how much they smoked daily, was available from birth certificates.

Newborns whose mothers smoked were at about a 50 to 70 percent greater risk for anomalies of the valve and vessels that carry blood to the lungs (pulmonary valve and pulmonary arteries) and about a 20 percent greater risk for holes in the wall separating the two collecting chambers of the heart (atrial septal defects). All of these defects often require invasive procedures to correct.