Index shows nearly two points increase in EU overall, but Greece and Latvia fall behind Sweden tops the table, while UK comes fourth with increase in line with EU average A healthy and active old age is a reality for many Europeans and is a genuine possibility for many more, despite the 2008 economic crash and years of austerity measures, according to a new United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and European Commission (EC) report, produced at the University of Southampton. However, countries such as Greece and Latvia have declined in active ageing ...

New work by Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich researchers demonstrates that macrophages can effectively substitute for so-called dendritic cells as primers of T-cell-dependent immune responses. Indeed, they stimulate a broader-based response. The immune response, the process by which the adaptive immune system reacts to, and eliminates foreign substances and cells, depends on a complex interplay between several different cell types. So-called dendritic cells, which recognize and internalize invasive pathogens, play a crucial role in this process. Inside ...

NEWPORT, Ore. - A team of scientists from the United States and Russia has documented the longest migration of a mammal ever recorded - a round-trip trek of nearly 14,000 miles by a whale identified as a critically endangered species that raises questions about its status. The researchers used satellite-monitored tags to track three western North Pacific gray whales from their primary feeding ground off Russia's Sakhalin Island across the Pacific Ocean and down the West Coast of the United States to Baja, Mexico. One of the tagged whales, dubbed Varvara (which is Russian ...

Anti-fungal drug shows promise as potential new cancer treatment A common anti-fungal treatment has joined the ranks of drugs that may be suitable for use in treating cancer, according to research from the Repurposing Drugs in Oncology (ReDO) project published in ecancermedicalscience. The ReDO project is an international collaboration of anticancer researchers dedicated to promoting the cause of common medicines which may represent an untapped source of novel therapies for cancer. In partnership with ecancer, the ReDO project is publishing a series of papers on drugs ...

Twitter users who post information about their personal health online might be considered by some to be "over-sharers," but new research led by the University of Arizona suggests that health-related tweets may have the potential to be helpful for hospitals. Led by Sudha Ram, a UA professor of management information systems and computer science, and Dr. Yolande Pengetnze, a physician scientist at the Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation in Dallas, the researchers looked specifically at the chronic condition of asthma and how asthma-related tweets, analyzed alongside ...

WASHINGTON (April 15, 2015) -- The George Washington University (GW) Cancer Institute has finalized 45 core competency statements for oncology patient navigators, who have become critical members of the health care team. These competency statements were published in the Journal of Oncology Navigation and Survivorship and were created through literature review, focus group data analysis, expert review, and a national survey of oncology patient navigation stakeholders. "Patient navigation is a rapidly growing health profession given new accreditation standards from the ...

Mathematical ideas and tools are often used to describe aspects of large macroscopic systems. Examples abound in areas as varied as finance to psychology. In a paper published last month in the SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics, author Fabio Bagarello proposes mathematical models to analyze political decision-making. Using a dynamical approach which accounts for interactions between political parties and their constituents, the model tries to deduce whether parties should form coalitions under various circumstances. "Mathematics is important in many aspects of social ...

Depression and type 2 diabetes mellitus were each associated with an increased risk for dementia and that risk was even greater among individuals diagnosed with both depression and diabetes compared with people who had neither condition, according to an article published online by JAMA Psychiatry. Diabetes and major depression are common in Western populations and as many as 20 percent of people with type 2 diabetes mellitus also have depression. Dimitry Davydow, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, and coauthors examined the risk ...

Amsterdam, April 15, 2015 - In a recent study published in Optics Communications, scientists from Bar-Ilan University in Israel have presented a new technique that significantly reduces the halo effect that is generated when using multifocal (contact and intra-ocular) lenses and looking at bright point sources in dark conditions. Presbyopia is a result of natural aging and stems from a gradual thickening and decrease in elasticity of the lens inside the eye. Corrective lenses used to address presbyopia often lead to a halo effect. This is basically a glow or color light ...

HOUSTON - (April 15, 2015) - A cobalt-based thin film serves double duty as a new catalyst that produces both hydrogen and oxygen from water to feed fuel cells, according to scientists at Rice University. The inexpensive, highly porous material invented by the Rice lab of chemist James Tour may have advantages as a catalyst for the production of hydrogen via water electrolysis. A single film far thinner than a hair can be used as both the anode and cathode in an electrolysis device. The researchers led by Rice postdoctoral researcher Yang Yang reported their discovery ...

The slow implementation of the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) in the USA as part of homeland security and anti-terrorism measures is leaving chemical plants vulnerable and putting at risk the safety of American citizens, according to research published in the International Journal of Critical Infrastructures. Maria Rooijakkers and Abdul-Akeem Sadiq of the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, at Indiana University-Purdue University, in Indianapolis, explain that post-9/11 efforts to safeguard the chemical sector gave the Department of Homeland ...

WASHINGTON -- U.S. communities and federal agencies should more intentionally seek to create healthier communities during disaster preparation and recovery efforts - something that rarely happens now, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine. By adding a health "lens" to planning and recovery, a community can both mitigate the health damage caused by disasters and recover in ways that make the community healthier and more resilient than it was before. "We have an opportunity to transform our response to devastating disasters into an effort to meaningfully enhance ...

MIT chemists have devised an inexpensive, portable sensor that can detect gases emitted by rotting meat, allowing consumers to determine whether the meat in their grocery store or refrigerator is safe to eat. The sensor, which consists of chemically modified carbon nanotubes, could be deployed in "smart packaging" that would offer much more accurate safety information than the expiration date on the package, says Timothy Swager, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Chemistry at MIT. It could also cut down on food waste, he adds. "People are constantly throwing things ...

Young offenders in late Victorian times were much less likely to go on to commit other crimes after serving a sentence in an institution than their counterparts today, new research shows. A study of the lives of 500 children committed to reformatory or industrial schools over a century ago showed that only 22% re-offended during the rest of their lives after their release. This compares with today's figure of 73% of young people re-offending within a year after release from custody. Professor Pamela Cox told the British Sociological Association's annual conference ...

LAWRENCE -- Most partisans -- average Democratic and Republican voters -- act like fans in sports rivalries instead of making political choices based on issues, according to a new study with a University of Kansas researcher as the lead author. "What is the consequence of today's polarized politics? What's motivating partisans to vote in this climate?" said Patrick Miller, a University of Kansas assistant professor of political science. "For too many of them, it's not high-minded, good-government, issue-based goals. It's, 'I hate the other party. I'm going to go out, ...

FAYETTEVILLE, AR - Determining and implementing orchard management practices that can improve soil organic matter is one of the primary goals of the USDA's National Organic Program. For producers in the southeastern United States, where interest in small-scale and organically managed orchards is growing, the challenge can be finding combinations of groundcover management systems and organic nutrient sources that can simultaneously improve soil quality. A new research study provides producers in the region with valuable information about effective organic orchard management ...

It's not all bad for crow chicks who have to share their nest with an uninvited pushy guest such as a cuckoo youngster. For one, they can sit back and wait for food to arrive while the cuckoo chick does all the begging for nourishment. So says Diana Bolopo of the University of Valladolid in Spain, who led a study into the pros and cons associated with the parasitic relationship of the great spotted cuckoo with the carrion crow. The findings are published in Springer's journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. When great spotted cuckoos parasitize and take over magpie ...

This news release is available in German. Modern, machine-friendly agriculture is dominated by monocultures. One single cultivar - one genotype of a crop species - is cultivated on large areas. Favored cultivars are optimized for high yields and often contain only few natural plant defense compounds. Unfortunately, these extensive monocultures of identical plants can become an ecological wasteland and cause permanent damage to the ecosystem, especially when combined with blanket application of fertilizer and pesticides. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of Colorado, Boulder, have developed a statistical model that allows them to tell where a dust sample came from within the continental United States based on the DNA of fungi found in the sample. The primary goal of the research was to develop a new forensic biology tool for law enforcement or archaeologists. "But it may also give us a greater understanding of the invisible ecosystems of microbial life that we know are all around us, but that we don't fully comprehend," says Neal Grantham, a Ph.D. student ...

Adults who have ADHD are much more likely to report they were sexually and physically abused before they turned 16 than their peers without ADHD, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Toronto. Among women, 34 per cent of those with ADHD reported they were sexually abused before they turned 18. In contrast, 14 per cent of women without ADHD reported that they had experienced childhood sexual abuse. Twice as many women with ADHD reported that they had experienced childhood physical abuse than women without this condition (44% vs 21%). "These ...

A species of bone-eating worm that was believed to have evolved in conjunction with whales has been dated back to prehistoric times when it fed on the carcasses of giant marine reptiles. Scientists at Plymouth University found that Osedax - popularised as the 'zombie worm' - originated at least 100 million years ago, and subsisted on the bones of prehistoric reptiles such as plesiosaurs and sea turtles. Reporting in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters this month, the research team at Plymouth reveal how they found tell-tale traces of Osedax on plesiosaur fossils ...

UCLA researchers have found that 77 percent of California primary care and specialty physicians understand the basics of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and 59 percent support it. The survey, conducted by doctors from the UCLA department of family medicine, was published in the peer-reviewed journal Family Medicine. Researchers also found that a majority of the 525 doctors surveyed believe ACA will steer the country's health care in the right direction. The doctors' stance on the law appeared to be closely correlated with their political affiliations ...

New research from New Zealand's University of Otago is providing the most comprehensive picture of the evolutionary history of baleen whales, which are not only the largest animals ever to live on earth, but also among the most unusual. Most other mammals feed on plants or grab a single prey animal at a time, but baleen whales are famous for their gigantic mouths and their ability to gulp and filter an enormous volume of water and food. In a paper appearing in the UK journal Royal Society Open Science, Otago Geology PhD graduate Dr Felix Marx and Professor Ewan Fordyce ...

New York, NY--April 15, 2015--A research team led by Shree K. Nayar, T.C. Chang Professor of Computer Science at Columbia Engineering, has invented a prototype video camera that is the first to be fully self-powered--it can produce an image each second, indefinitely, of a well-lit indoor scene. They designed a pixel that can not only measure incident light but also convert the incident light into electric power. The team is presenting its work at the International Conference on Computational Photography at Rice University in Houston, April 24 to 26. "We are in the middle ...

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY'S HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS -CEOs make a lot of money from incentive pay tied to stock performance. Although such schemes help align executives' interests with shareholders, they are not necessarily the best schemes as compared to schemes that rely on trust between board and executives. "Ironically, the necessary trust is easier to establish when the alternative of using stock-based pay is less powerful. Our research found that government-imposed limits on contingent compensation make stock-based pay a worse alternative, facilitating superior ...