Health briefs: The risks of shoveling snow

Snow shoveling is a chore that causes an average of nearly 100 deaths and 11,500 hospital visits a year in the United States, according to a study in January's American Journal of Emergency Medicine.

Kids younger than 19 experience more than 1,750 shoveling-related injuries a year, investigators found. Analysis of data from 1990 to 2006 found the most common injuries were soft-tissue damage (55 percent), cuts (16 percent) and broken bones (7 percent). Heart problems accounted for only 7 percent of all shoveling-related cases but were responsible for all 1,647 deaths.

Keyboard brain

As keyboards increasingly replace pens, research cautions that the switch may come with a price: the loss of critical brain activity central to learning that is tied to the old-fashioned act of handwriting.

The concern stems from results of experiments recently reviewed by a pair of researchers in France and Norway who concluded that writing by hand is actually a very different sensory experience than typing on a keyboard, with each activating distinctly different parts of the brain.

- HealthDay