Brain imaging studies examine how anti-smoking medications may curb cravings

Did you know that when you pick up a product promoted as trans fat free, you may still be ingesting a significant amount of this potentially harmful substance? An article by Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine student Eric Brandt, published in the January/February 2011 issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion, reveals that misleading labeling practices can result in medically significant intake of harmful trans fat, despite what you read on Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved labels. Indeed, consumers' inability to identify high-risk foods ...

New York, NY (January 3, 2010) --- Parent education programs delivered through pediatric primary care offices increased parent-child play and reading activities critical for child development and school readiness during infancy in at-risk families, according to two concurrent reports in the January issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. "Research has shown that children growing up in poverty fall behind their middle-class peers in development – even before their first birthday," says Alan L. Mendelsohn, MD, a developmental-behavioral ...

Combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms appear to be associated with longer-term physical (headache, tinnitus), emotional (irritability) and cognitive (diminished concentration or memory) symptoms, according to a report in the January issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Conversely, concussion/mild traumatic brain injuries (MTBI) do not appear to have long-term negative effects on troops. "Nearly 2 million troops have been deployed to Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom since 2001," the ...

Jerusalem, January 3. 2011 – With the current outbreak of the flu season in Israel, hospitals are reporting overcrowding, and doctors are advising people who have not yet been vaccinated against flu to get their shots. Surprisingly, however, three physicists -- one from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and two others from the University of Michigan – have developed an unconventional, theoretical strategy for intensive but limited vaccination against infectious diseases (such as flu) that would replace the practice of mass inoculation over a prolonged period. The ...

In emerging countries such as China or Brazil, meat consumption is rising dramatically. Indeed, worldwide consumption of red meat has quadrupled since 1961. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) expects increasing prosperity to lead to a doubling of global meat production by the year 2050. The question is whether our planet, with its limited farmland resources, will still be able to meet all of our needs into the future. Possible solutions for the brewing dilemma are familiar to Dr.-Ing. Peter Eisner of the Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering ...

CO2 is more than just a waste product. In fact, it has a variety of uses: the chemical industry makes use of this colorless gas to produce urea, methanol and salicylic acid. Urea is a fertilizer, methanol is a fuel additive, and salicylic acid is an ingredient in aspirin. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology UMSICHT in Oberhausen are pursuing a new idea by testing how carbon dioxide can be used to impregnate plastics. At a temperature of 30.1 degrees Celsius and a pressure of 73.8 bar, CO2 goes into a supercritical state ...

VIDEO: University of Cincinnati researcher Kathleen Lynch, associate professor of classics, examines a time line of wine-drinking cups in ancient Athens. Changes in these cups, which were used in symposia (think... Click here for more information. How commonly used items – like wine drinking cups – change through time can tell us a lot about those times, according to University of Cincinnati research to be presented Jan. 7 by Kathleen Lynch, UC associate professor of classics, ...

The hair color of an unknown perpetrator who has committed a crime will soon no longer be a secret for forensic investigators. Erasmus MC scientists, in collaboration with their Polish colleagues, have discovered that DNA can be used to predict people's probable hair color. Their findings¹ will be published today in the Springer journal Human Genetics. The research findings demonstrate that on the basis of DNA information it is possible to determine with an accuracy of more than 90 percent whether a person has red hair, with a similarly high accuracy whether a person ...

MANHATTAN, KAN. -- When engineers restore rivers, one Kansas State University professor hopes they'll keep a smaller engineer in mind: the North American beaver. Beavers are often called ecosystem engineers because they can radically alter stream or valley bottom ecosystems, said Melinda Daniels, an associate professor of geography who recently studied the connection between beavers and river restoration. Beaver dams create diverse river landscapes, she said, and can turn a single-thread channel stream into a meadow, pond or multichannel, free-flowing stream. "Our argument ...

Philadelphia, PA, January 3, 2011 – Postoperative adhesions are a major complication in strabismus surgery. Amniotic membrane has been used in the hopes of preventing these adhesions by forming a biological barrier during healing. In an article in the December 2010 issue of the Journal of AAPOS, the Official Publication of the American Association of Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus, a team of researchers from Cairo University have discovered that the new approach may also have the opposite effect. Dr. Rehab Kassem and coauthors describe how they wrapped the extraocular ...