Methylmercury, a toxic form of mercury that is readily absorbed from the gastro-intestinal tract and can cause in a variety of health issues, poses a significant threat to marine animals at the top of the food web. A new study confirms that Artic species of these animals have higher concentrations of methylmercury in their tissues compared with animals lower in the food web; however, it also shows similar trends in selenium, which could help play a protective role against the toxic effects of mercury. "Methylmercury concentrations increased through the food web at greater ...

When a patient is in urgent need of a doctor for illness or injury, expecting that doctor to help is natural. But a new study , published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, finds that the greater patients' need for medical care, the more likely patients will view their doctors as "empty vessels," devoid of emotions or personal lives of their own; at the same time, those patients expect their physicians to be able to contain the patients' emotions and experiences. The study is unusual in that most research focuses on the reverse--how physicians view patients. In ...

Students who have used electronic cigarettes by the time they start ninth grade are more likely than others to start smoking traditional cigarettes and other combustible tobacco products within the next year, according to a new study funded by the National Institutes of Health. E-cigarettes deliver nicotine to the lungs by heating a liquid solution that contains nicotine and other chemicals to produce an aerosol that the user inhales, a process often called "vaping." The study compared tobacco use initiation among 222 students who had used e-cigarettes, but not combustible ...

August 18, 2015--Individuals near the middle of the social hierarchy suffer higher rates of depression and anxiety than those at the top or bottom, according to researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Nearly twice the number of supervisors and managers reported they suffered from anxiety compared to workers. Symptoms of depression were reported by 18 percent of supervisors and managers compared to 12 percent for workers. Findings are online in the journal Sociology of Health & Illness. While social disadvantage related to income and educational ...

A new study indicates that for a 2.5 year period shortly before and during the early years of the Greek economic crisis, the prevalence of overweight and obesity decreased in Greek schoolchildren. This was accompanied by an increase in the prevalence of normal weight children and a slight increase in the prevalence of underweight children. Because this study coincided with the eruption of the Greek economic crisis, it suggests that the changes may be related to the suboptimal conditions that a significant percentage of the Greek population lived in during that period. Additional ...

CHAPEL HILL NC - Although metformin was introduced as a treatment for type 2 diabetes nearly 60 years ago and is now the recommended first-line treatment for newly diagnosed patients, researchers still debate precisely how the drug works. Now, a study published online today in Diabetes Care by researchers at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Elcelyx Therapeutics, and other leading endocrinologists provides strong evidence that metformin's primary effect occurs in the gut, not the bloodstream. The paper outlines results from phase 1 and phase 2 studies ...

Research suggests intoxicated victims of sexual assault could accurately retain information from events Findings are being applied to develop National Guidelines for how the police could interview sexual assault victims who were intoxicated during the crime Challenges misconception that intoxicated victims and witnesses are unreliable People are often concerned about the accuracy of testimony given by victims who were intoxicated during a sexual assault- but a new study by University of Leicester researchers has found that while alcohol intoxicated participants ...

Long considered in relation to malnutrition and humanitarian aid, food security policy should be moving towards a much broader landscape and focusing on regular access to food for a population nearing nine billion towards 2030-2050, while addressing food insecurity for a fraction of communities, according to a JRC foresight report. Due to a growing population, climate change, limiting expansion of agricultural land and increasing demand of high-energy food input, achieving global food security will be one of the most critical challenges in the coming years. Traditionally ...

This news release is available in German. Microbes are the oldest and most successful organisms on the planet, and they communicate and interact using chemistry as their language. While research of the past decades has uncovered fascinating insights into the chemical interactions of microorganisms in the laboratory, it remains extremely challenging to understand what happens in the natural environment. One of the key issues is the difficulty to tie the production of particular molecules to individual bacterial cells or at least populations of cells in complex environmental ...

For the first time ever, researchers have succeeded in creating arrangements of colloids - tiny particles suspended in a solution - and, importantly, they have managed to control their motion with high precision and speed. Thanks to this new technique developed by scientists at the University of Zurich, colloidal nanoparticles may play a role in digital technologies of the future. Nanoparticles can be rapidly displaced, require little energy and their small footprint offers large storage capacity - all these attributes make them well suited to new data storage applications ...

In a commentary published in the Aug. 13 issue of JAMA, Johns Hopkins experts say consolidation of hospitals into massive chains threatens healthy competition, reduces patient choice and could drive up medical expenses. The authors call on the Federal Trade Commission -- the regulatory body overseeing business practices and consumer protection -- to be more vigilant and cautious when hospital systems seek approval to consolidate and to pay particular attention to geographic regions where proposed mergers could create a single dominant hospital system. "It's really Economics ...

AMES, Iowa - Mothers are often the caregiver when a child is sick, and that motherly instinct doesn't go away when the child is an adult. In fact, mothers provide more support to adult children with a serious health condition than to their other children, according to new research that will be presented at the American Sociological Association 2015 Annual Meeting. It's a situation that can put older mothers in a vulnerable position, said Megan Gilligan, lead author and assistant professor of human development and family studies at Iowa State University. Gilligan and ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University, Institut Langevin and Paris-Descartes University have conducted a proof-of-concept study that raises the possibility of using ultrasound techniques to detect cervical stiffness changes that indicate an increased risk of preterm labor in pregnant women. While additional work needs to be done, it may ultimately give doctors a new tool for determining when to provide treatment that can prevent preterm birth. Premature births can mean low birthweights and other medical problems for newborns, but there are steps that doctors ...

An international research team reports results of a three-year study of sediment samples collected offshore from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in a new paper published August 18, 2015, in the American Chemical Society's journal, Environmental Science and Technology. The research aids in understanding what happens to Fukushima contaminants after they are buried on the seafloor off coastal Japan. Led by Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist and marine chemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the team found that a small fraction of contaminated ...

Only 1 in 10 heart failure patients is referred to a cardiac rehabilitation program after being hospitalized, despite strong evidence that such exercise programs improve quality of life and reduce the likelihood of future hospitalizations. The findings, from a UCLA-led study, appear in the August 25 Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Researchers drew the data from a national database of more than 100,000 people with heart failure who were discharged from hospitals between 2005 and 2014 and were eligible for cardiac rehabilitation programs. "Although we expected ...

A new class of fascinating technologies -- including optics in computing, telecommunications links and switches, and virtually any other optical component -- could be created simply by configuring a mesh of light-controlling devices known as interferometers. This is similar to the way electronic semiconductors can fashion the wide array of digital technologies we have at our disposal today. Optical technologies have the potential to greatly reduce the power consumption of computers, speed telecommunications, and enhance the sensitivity of chemical and biological sensors. ...

A national survey of more than 750 emergency medical services providers conducted by researchers at Oregon Health & Science University identified airway management skills, personal anxiety and limited pediatric care proficiency among key factors that may contribute to pediatric safety events for children in out-of-hospital emergent care situations. The study, published online today in The Journal of Pediatrics, supports the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommendation for pediatric physician involvement in EMS training, medical oversight and policy development. "Pediatric ...

Violent conflicts in Neolithic Europe were held more brutally than has been known so far. This emerges from a recent anthropological analysis of the roughly 7000-year-old mass grave of Schöneck-Kilianstädten by researcher of the Universities of Basel and Mainz. The findings, published in the journal PNAS, show that victims were murdered and deliberately mutilated. It was during the time when Europeans first began to farm. To what degree conflicts and wars featured in the early Neolithic (5600 to 4900 B.C.), and especially in the so-called Linear Pottery culture ...

A study of catsharks reveals how alterations in the expression and function of certain genes in limb buds underlie the evolution of fish fins to limbs. The findings are reported by researchers from Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech), the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG, Barcelona) and their collaborators in the journal eLife and give new insight into how fish evolved to live on land in the form of early tetrapods. The first four-legged, land-living creatures - known as early tetrapods - evolved from fish, following the transformation of fins into limbs. This ...

Patient satisfaction is a very poor proxy for quality of care comparisons in elective cranial neurosurgery. Because deaths are rare events in elective cranial neurosurgery, reporting of surgeon or even department-specific mortality figures cannot differentiate a high or low level of the quality of care. The current focus on patient safety in health care has led to public quality-of-care comparisons between health care facilities and even between individual health care professionals. In the United States, a new reimbursement method based on patient satisfaction ratings ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - New research findings contradict a fundamental assumption about the functioning of "organic" solar cells made of low-cost plastics, suggesting a new strategy for creating inexpensive solar technology. Commercialization of organic solar cells has been hindered by inefficiencies, but the findings point toward a potential path to create a new class of solar technology able to compete with standard silicon cells. "These solar cells could provide a huge cost advantage over silicon," said Muhammad Ashraful Alam, Purdue University's Jai N. Gupta Professor ...

A new international study is the first to use a high-resolution, large-scale computer model to estimate how much ice the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could lose over the next couple of centuries, and how much that could add to sea-level rise. The results paint a clearer picture of West Antarctica's future than was previously possible. The study is published today (18 August) in The Cryosphere, an open access journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU). "The IPCC's [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] 4th and 5th Assessment Reports both note that the acceleration ...

A group of clinicians and geochemists are working to develop a test for the most common form of primary liver cancer, HCC (Hepatocellular Carcinoma). HCC kills over 600,000 people worldwide every year. It usually develops from chronic liver disease such as hepatitis or cirrhosis, but there is no good biochemical test to indicate when the cancer develops, meaning that even for patients most at risk, it is nearly impossible to know when a cancer may develop until symptoms appear. Now a multi-national group of scientists are developing a new test for HCC, based on methods ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Employees with a racially diverse group of friends outside of work may actually perform better at their jobs, a new study suggests. Researchers found that workers who had more different-race friends in their personal lives than their co-workers also tended to have a more racially diverse network of friends on the job. This broader network was linked to employees who did more tasks beyond their job responsibilities and who, under certain circumstances, had more trust in their supervisors. "Your friends outside of work actually have this connection to ...

This news release is available in French. This news release is available in French. New research shows that teaching young adolescents practical cooking skills leads to positive changes for the entire family. In an article published today in Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism, an NRC Research Press journal (a division of Canadian Science Publishing), researchers evaluated the Kinect-Ed presentation and found an increase in the frequency of family dinners after participation. Kinect-Ed, a 90-minute motivational nutrition education presentation, was ...