ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Parents often bring their school-aged children to check-ups or sick visits armed with questions. What should he put on that rash? What about her cough that won't go away? But when children's temper tantrums or mood swings are beyond the norm, or they are overwhelmed by homework organization, do parents speak up? Today's University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health finds that many parents of children age 5-17 wouldn't discuss behavioral or emotional issues that could be signs of potential health problems ...

Social media messaging, screening and interventions offer new tools to help colleges prevent and reduce excessive drinking, according to a report authored by a Boston University School of Public Health researcher, working with a group of experts. The report recommends that colleges use mobile technology to address heavy drinking on campuses as part of a comprehensive approach that includes consistent enforcement of drinking age and consumption laws, trained intervention specialists, and a crackdown on low-priced serving methods such as kegs and "happy hours." "Low prices ...

New research finds that misdiagnoses lead to increased risk of incorrect antibiotic use, threatening patient outcomes and antimicrobial efficacy, while increasing healthcare costs. The study was published online today in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. "Antibiotic therapies are used for approximately 56 percent of inpatients in U.S. hospitals, but are found to be inappropriate in nearly half of these cases, and many of these failures are connected with inaccurate diagnoses," said Greg Filice, ...

Practice may not make perfect, but visualization might. New research shows that people who imagined a visual target before having to pick it out of a group of distracting items were faster at finding the target than those who did an actual practice run beforehand. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "The idea that we can train our brains to work better is all the rage across society, but our research suggests that the human brain may benefit as much, or even more, from imagining performing a task, ...

HANOVER, N.H. - Opening the way for new applications of smart devices, Dartmouth researchers have created the first form of real-time communication that allows screens and cameras to talk to each other without the user knowing it. Using off-the-shelf smart devices, the new system supports an unobtrusive, flexible and lightweight communication channel between screens (of TVs, laptops, tablets, smartphones and other electronic devices) and cameras. The system, called HiLight, will enable new context-aware applications for smart devices. Such applications include smart glasses ...

Singapore, 18 May 2015 - A seven-year scientific study has revealed that microbial communities in urban waterways has the potential to play an important role in cleansing Singapore's waterways and also act as raw water quality indicators. The study found that canals designed to channel rainwater host microbial communities that could remove and neutralise organic pollutants in raw water. These organic pollutants are currently at trace levels in raw water - well below the United States-Environmental Protection Agency (US-EPA) drinking water standards - which is removed ...

In a letter to the Medical Journal of Australia published today, a Monash University-led team is asking for hepatitis C virus patients to gain improved access to drugs to prevent liver related deaths. Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a major public health burden in Australia, with estimates of 230,000 people chronically infected. The research team are calling for the government to subsidise a new therapy which has high cure rates, known as direct acting antiviral (DAA) therapy. Monash University Professor William Sievert said a delay in access to DAA treatment ...

Washington, DC (May 18, 2015) -- Patients faced with a choice of surgical options want to engage their physicians and take a more active role in decision-making, according to a study (abstract 567) released at Digestive Disease Week® (DDW) 2015. Further, those physicians must provide better support tools to help patients participate in the decision-making process. The study found that patients consult multiple sources (Internet, family, friends, doctors, etc.) and say that while doctors provide the most believable information, it was also the least helpful. "In this ...

The historical past is important when we seek to understand environmental conditions as they are today and predict how these might change in the future. This is according to researchers from Umeå University, whose analyses of lake-sediment records show how lake-water carbon concentrations have varied depending on long-term natural dynamics over thousands of years, but also in response to human impacts over the past several hundred years. The study has been published in PNAS (the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences). Environmental monitoring programmes ...

Just as alchemists always dreamed of turning common metal into gold, their 19th century physicist counterparts dreamed of efficiently turning heat into electricity, a field called thermoelectrics. Such scientists had long known that in conducting materials the flow of energy in the form of heat is accompanied by a flow of electrons. What they did not know at the time is that it takes nanometric-scale systems for the flow of charge and heat to reach a level of efficiency that cannot be achieved with larger scale systems. Now, in a paper published in EPJ B Barbara Szukiewicz ...

The grounding of a giant iceberg in Antarctica has provided a unique real-life experiment that has revealed the vulnerability of marine ecosystems to sudden changes in sea-ice cover. UNSW Australia scientists have found that within just three years of the iceberg becoming stuck in Commonwealth Bay - an event which dramatically increased sea-ice cover in the bay - almost all of the seaweed on the sea floor had decomposed, or become discoloured or bleached due to lack of light. "Understanding the ecological effect of changes in sea-ice is vital for understanding the future ...

Scientists are attempting to mimic the memory and learning functions of neurons found in the human brain. To do so, they investigated the electronic equivalent of the synapse, the bridge, making it possible for neurons to communicate with each other. Specifically, they rely on an electronic circuit simulating neural networks using memory resistors. Such devices, dubbed memristor, are well-suited to the task because they display a resistance, which depends on their past states, thus producing a kind of electronic memory. Hui Zhao from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, ...

An international team of scientists have discovered a new species of typhlogammarid amphipod in the limestone karstic caves of Chjalta mountain range -- the southern foothills of the Greater Caucasus Range. The study was published in the open access journal Subterranean Biology. The new amphipod, which belongs to the genus Zenkevitchia, is the second species known from this group. This new addition to the genus is named Zenkevitchia yakovi after the famous Russian biospeleologist Prof Yakov Birstein. Typhlogammarid amphipods are a group blind and unpigmented endemic ...

Radiotherapy used in cancer treatment is a promising treatment method, albeit rather indiscriminate. Indeed, it affects neighbouring healthy tissues and tumours alike. Researchers have thus been exploring the possibilities of using various radio-sensitizers; these nanoscale entities focus the destructive effects of radiotherapy more specifically on tumour cells. In a study published in EPJ D, physicists have now shown that the production of low-energy electrons by radio-sensitizers made of carbon nanostructures hinges on a key physical mechanism referred to as plasmons ...

This news release is available in German. Scientists from Paris and Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin have been able to switch ferromagnetic domains on and off with low voltage in a structure made of two different ferroic materials. The switching works slightly above room temperature. Their results, which are published online in Scientific Reports, might inspire future applications in low-power spintronics, for instance for fast and efficient data storage. Information can be written as a sequence of bit digits, i.e. "0" and "1". Materials which display ferromagnetism ...

Bowel cancer is often driven by mutations in one of several different genes, and a patient can have a cancer with a different genetic make-up to another patient's cancer. Identifying the molecular alterations involved in each patient's cancer enables doctors to choose drugs that best target specific alterations. However, it is also becoming clear that while some cancers may be driven by a single gene mutation, individual tumours are often composed of groups of cancer cells, with each group having different molecular alterations from the others. This is known as intra-tumour ...

Streptococcus pneumoniae is a major human pathogen and is known to be associated with increased risk of fatal heart complications including heart failure and heart attacks. As Streptococcus pneumoniae is a respiratory pathogen that does not infect the heart, however, this association with heart problems has puzzled clinicians and researchers, particularly as even prompt use of antibiotics does not provide any protection from cardiac complications. A multidisciplinary research team, led by Professor Aras Kadioglu and Professor Cheng-Hock Toh at the University of Liverpool, ...

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 18, 2015 -- Human beings have unique voices -- from the deep, resonating bass of James Earl Jones to the raspy melodies sung by Broadway star Carol Channing -- and we routinely recognize individuals based solely on the way they sound, for example over the telephone, on a music CD or in an animated film. The same theory that explains individual differences in human speech has recently been applied to other members of the animal kingdom, including dogs and deer. Now researchers from Syracuse University in New York are working to understand whether ...

Predatory seals are constraining the recovery of cod stocks in Scottish West coast waters, research led at the University of Strathclyde suggests. Losses of cod, through fishing and natural causes, have remained high for many years and have caused long-term decline in the stock - in some years, fishing removed around 50% of the total weight of the stock. The study found that, although fishing has now halved, predation by seals has rapidly increased to compensate, eating up more than 40% of the total stock. Seals have, historically, been anecdotally blamed for the reduction ...

Stanford computer scientists have shown how crowdfunding websites can use data science to boost cash value of donations. Their research confirms, among other findings, the importance of a timely thank you. It's common courtesy to say thanks when receiving a gift, and common sense to think that givers might be generous again if they felt good about their prior gift. Now Stanford computer scientists have shown how crowdfunding websites like Kickstarter and DonorsChoose.org can use data science to apply these folk wisdoms systematically, and on a large scale, to greatly ...

PISCATAWAY, NJ - Among people who use medical cannabis for chronic pain, those who also take prescription pain medications are not at increased risk for serious alcohol and other drug involvement, according to a study in the May issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. Although medical cannabis is being used increasingly often as an alternative to opioids for chronic pain, in many patients it is being used in conjunction with opioids. This use has raised concerns that the combination could increase the risk of patients using substances such as alcohol and ...

New York, NY, May 18 2015 -- Shiftwork is an occupational health risk of growing significance because it is becoming more common and because of its potential influence on health outcomes, possibly increasing health differences between workers of higher vs lower socioeconomic status. A new study from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health determined that employees who work shifts outside of a 9-to-5 schedule are more likely to be overweight and experience sleep problems, and possibly more likely to develop metabolic disorders, such as diabetes, ...

(Boston) -- A new test co-developed by a Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) researcher will allow patients suspected of having lung cancer to be subjected to fewer and less-invasive tests to determine if they have the disease. "We are seeing an increase in the number of lesions suspicious for lung cancer found on chest imaging of current and former smokers. In the past, these patients have been subjected to invasive tests when traditional bronchoscopy tests prove inconclusive. Today's announcement provides physicians and patients with an additional piece of scientifically ...

The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal is pleased to announce that the following Series of papers on depression and diabetes will be published on Monday 18 May to coincide with the 2015 Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). The Series is accompanied by another Series of papers on Diabetes and psychotic disorders, available in the latest issue of The Lancet Psychiatry. Constructs of depression and distress in diabetes: time for an appraisal [Embargo: 6:30pm [New York time] Sunday 17 May, 2015] The link between depression and diabetes: the ...

ATS 2015, DENVER -- Regular use of aspirin may help slow the progression of early emphysema, according to new research presented at the 2015 American Thoracic Society International Conference. "Other than smoking cessation and avoidance, there are no known methods for reducing the risk of developing emphysema," said researcher Carrie Aaron MD, of the Columbia University Medical Center in New York. "In our large general population sample, we found that regular aspirin use (three or more days per week) was associated with a slower progression of percent emphysema on computed ...