Washington, Apr 15 : An Australian researcher says that a new treatment, called the Lee Silverman Voice Treatment, may prove effective in curing speech disorder in people who have suffered a stroke or brain injury.

Dr Rachel Wenke, from University of Queensland (UQ), has shown that the treatment may be helpful for dysarthria patients suffering from stroke and traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Washington, Apr 15 : In a breakthrough study, a group of patients with type 1 diabetes were freed from daily insulin injections for up to four years following a transplant using their own stem cells.

According to the study in the April 15 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on diabetes, majority of patients with type 1 diabetes who underwent a certain type of stem cell transplantation became insulin free with good glycemic control, and also increased C-peptide levels, an indirect measure of beta-cell function.

Richard K. Burt, M. D., of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, presented the findings of the study at a JAMA media briefing at the National Press Club in Washington, D. C.

Washington, Apr 15 : The White House has said that the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation accord signed by the Pakistani Government with the Taliban to put certain parts of the country under Islamic law is against human rights and democracy.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said President Barack Obama's Administration believed that "solutions involving security in Pakistan don't include less democracy and less human-rights.

"The signing of that denoting strict Islamic law in Swat valley goes against both those principles," the Daily Times quoted Gibbs, as saying.

"We are disappointed that parliament did not take into account legitimate concerns around civil and human rights," he added.

Washington, Apr 15 : The United States has said that financial assistance to Pakistan would have to be with benchmarks, ignoring Islamabad's demands that the US not attach conditions to a non-military aid.

"I think you would expect when the US taxpayer is providing money - assistance to a country, that we want to make sure that we're not only getting our money's worth but that certain things that we care about, we want to see that they be dealt with," said State Department Spokesman Robert Wood.

Washington, April 15 : People's attention does not return time and again to the objects they have already seen while searching for something, but they tend to shift their eyes to previously fixated locations when performing other visual tasks, according to a study.

Psychologists Michael D. Dodd from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, Stefan Van der Stigchel of Utrecht University, and Andrew Hollingworth from the University of Iowa tracked eye movements of volunteers as they viewed various scenes, and recorded the location where the eyes were focused at each moment.

The volunteers were divided into four groups, with each group receiving different instructions for scene viewing.

Washington, Apr 15 : Burgers, pizzas, chips and soft drinks might be making children fatter but they also make them happy, concludes a new study.

According to Professor Hung-Hao Chang from National Taiwan University and Professor Rodolfo Nayga from the University of Arkansas in the US, programs aimed at tackling childhood obesity, by reducing children's consumption of unhealthy food and drink, are likely to be more effective if they also actively seek to keep children happy in other ways.

The study has been published in Springer's Journal of Happiness Studies.