Exporting is a popular way to enter an international market. But just how are export decisions made? In a rapidly changing economic environment, can exporting companies rely on improvisation? Or should they commit to carefully thought out and executed plans? According to a new study in the Journal of Marketing Research, companies need to do both, to plan as well as improvise, as there is no one "best way" for export managers to make decisions. "That both planning and improvisation are needed may come as a surprise. Historically, observers have viewed planning and improvisation ...

Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, the period in which we experience vivid dreams, was discovered by scientists in the 1950s. Because REM sleep is associated with dreaming, on the one hand, and eye movement, on the other, it has been tempting to assume that each movement of the eye is associated with a specific dream image. But despite decades of intense research by leading international scientists, this intuitive hypothesis has remained unproven. A new study based on rare neuronal data offers the first scientific evidence of the link between rapid eye movement, dream images, ...

Suppose China wants to buy microprocessors from the United States. The two countries sign a contract--and then the United States hopes that China, as the buyer, holds up its end of the bargain. (One could say the same for China, by the way.) One might think that a contract spelling out in detail the terms of sale and delivery would eliminate the chance that the buyer would violate those terms. A new study in the Journal of International Marketing, however, suggests that well-specified contracts are effective in reducing violations on the part of the buyer only if the buyer ...

Male and female brains operate differently at a molecular level, a Northwestern University research team reports in a new study of a brain region involved in learning and memory, responses to stress and epilepsy. Many brain disorders vary between the sexes, but how biology and culture contribute to these differences has been unclear. Now Northwestern neuroscientists have found an intrinsic biological difference between males and females in the molecular regulation of synapses in the hippocampus. This provides a scientific reason to believe that female and male brains ...

Scientists, for the first time, have identified a mechanism in the muscle cells of the uterus that could point to how contractions in childbirth grow stronger. It is understood that the hormone oxytocin plays a significant role in stimulating contractions during labour, which helps to move a baby down the birth canal. It is not known, however, how these contractions increase and sustain their strength during hours of labour. A team at Liverpool investigated how uterine contractions grow stronger when the human body's 'biological rules' dictates that contractions ...

Mason, Ohio - August 12, 2015 - A new study published in Current Medical Research and Opinion demonstrated $1,036 in annual prescription savings per patient when healthcare providers used the GeneSight® combinatorial pharmacogenomic (CPGx™) test results to guide treatment decisions compared with usual trial-and-error prescribing. CPGx is the evaluation of multiple genetic factors that influence an individual's response to medications. Unlike other tests, GeneSight measures multiple clinically important genomic variants for each patient and weights them together ...

Washington, DC (12 August 2015) - Today the Population Council released new evidence on what works to delay the age of marriage for extremely vulnerable girls in sub-Saharan Africa. Researchers also shared rarely available data on the cost of interventions that were tested, and issued recommendations for policymakers, donors, and organizations concerned about child marriage. Each year, more than 14 million girls around the world get married before the age of 18. In sub-Saharan Africa, more than 1 in 10 girls are married before the age of 15. Four in ten are married before ...

Over the last few decades, researchers have focused their attention on very large molecules and molecular systems. Scientists from all over the world study proteomics, genomics, construct complex proteins, nucleic acids, decode the genomes of entire organisms, and design new sub-cellular structures. Outstanding enthusiasm for these important and essential areas of science has become so widespread that the question arose: "Is there a place for small organic molecules in modern science?" It might seem that old and well-known small organic molecules, as well as some areas ...

Most people who smoke cigarettes know it's bad for their health, but quitting is notoriously difficult. To make it easier, scientists are taking a brand-new approach. They are turning to bacteria that thrive on nicotine, the addictive component in tobacco. In ACS' Journal of the American Chemical Society, they report successful tests on a bacterial enzyme that breaks down nicotine and could potentially dull its effects in humans. Tobacco use remains the leading cause of preventable disease, disability and death in the U.S. Smokers who want to quit can turn to various ...

Once mercury is emitted into the atmosphere from the smokestacks of power plants, the pollutant has a complicated trajectory; even after it settles onto land and sinks into oceans, mercury can be re-emitted back into the atmosphere repeatedly. This so-called "grasshopper effect" keeps the highly toxic substance circulating as "legacy emissions" that, combined with new smokestack emissions, can extend the environmental effects of mercury for decades. Now an international team led by MIT researchers has conducted a new analysis that provides more accurate estimates of ...

A new study analysing available statistics on consumer food waste has estimated that Europeans waste an average of 123 kg per capita annually, or 16% of all food reaching consumers. Almost 80% (97 kg) is avoidable as it is edible food. Averaged for all EU citizens, this translates into 47 million tonnes of avoidable food waste annually. The JRC scientists who carried out the research also calculated the water and nitrogen resources associated with the avoidable food waste, by means of the water and nitrogen footprint concepts. The study, 'Lost water and nitrogen resources ...

The crime scene investigators on TV's popular CSI: Crime Scene Investigation series seem able to solve any mystery thanks to a little science and a lot of artistic license. But now there is a real-life technique that could outperform even fictional sleuths' crime-busting tools. Scientists report in ACS' journal Analytical Chemistry a way to tell how old fingerprints are. This could help investigators determine which sets are relevant and which ones were left long ago. Law enforcement officials have long relied on fingerprints left behind by criminals to help solve cases. ...

Long-standing concerns about portable electronics include the devices' short battery life and their contribution to e-waste. One group of scientists is now working on a way to address both of these seeming unrelated issues at the same time. They report in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces the development of a biodegradable nanogenerator made with DNA that can harvest the energy from everyday motion and turn it into electrical power. Many people may not realize it, but the movements we often take for granted -- such as walking and tapping on our keyboards ...

This news release is available in French. Scientists at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital -The Neuro, at McGill University and the McGill University Health Centre, have made a breakthrough in understanding an important protein that appears to act as a kind of cellular "marriage broker." The protein called Netrin1 brings cells together and maintains their healthy relationships. Netrin1 plays an essential role in the growth of the human organism, directing cell migration and the formation of cell circuits both at the embryo stage and after birth. The ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Mark Zimmerman, M.D., a clinical researcher at Rhode Island Hospital, and his team analyzed the criteria used in antidepressant efficacy studies (AETs) and learned that the inclusion/exclusion criteria for AETs have narrowed over the past five years so that the most patients are excluded. The research was published today in Mayo Clinic Proceedings. "The inclusion/exclusion criteria for AETs have narrowed over the past five years, thereby suggesting that AETs may be even less generalizable than they were previously," said Zimmerman, director of outpatient ...

Rice University scientists have developed a big data technique that could have a significant impact on health care. The Rice lab of bioengineer Amina Qutub designed an algorithm called "progeny clustering" that is being used in a hospital study to identify which treatments should be given to children with leukemia. Details of the work appear today in Nature's online journal Scientific Reports. Clustering is important for its ability to reveal information in complex sets of data like medical records. The technique is used in bioinformatics -- a topic of interest to ...

GeoSpace Natural arches hum their health and scientists are listening For the first time, scientists have found a way to detect if the breathtaking natural arches of Utah's Canyonlands and Arches national parks are suffering from internal damage that could lead to their collapse, according to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters. 16th century Italian earthquake changed river's course In 1570, a 5.8-magnitude earthquake struck the northern Italian city of Ferrara, causing dozens of deaths, major damage to the city and thousands to flee. A new study in Journal ...

Fast Facts: Study reveals pediatric pulmonary hypertension hospitalizations on the rise, resulting in skyrocketing costs. Findings uncover need to initiate a national registry to track individual patients over time and to provide a foundation for clinical trials to test new and better treatments. Study finds pulmonary hypertension hospitalizations now higher in children without congenital heart disease. A review of 15 years' worth of data in a national pediatric medical database has documented a substantial increase in the rate of hospitalizations for children ...

KU Leuven biologists have discovered a molecular on-off switch that controls how a mouse brain responds to vision loss. When the switch is on, the loss of sight in one eye will be compensated by the other eye, but also by tactile input from the whiskers. When the switch is off, only the other eye will take over. These findings may help improve patient susceptibility to sensory prosthetics such as cochlear implants or bionic eyes. Our brain adjusts to changes of all kind. This brain plasticity is useful for neural development and learning, but also comes into play when ...

Online social networking generates vast quantities of data that might be useful to the service providers, advertising agencies, and even the users themselves. Writing in the International Journal of Communication Networks and Distributed Systems this month, researchers in India describe an approach to establishing new connections in a network using what they refer to as a "firefly swarm approach" Ebin Deni Raj and Dhinesh Babu of the School of Information Technology and Engineering, VIT University, in Tamil Nadu, explain that the emergence of social computing, especially ...

Scientists, for the first time, have identified a mechanism in the muscle cells of the uterus that could point to how contractions in childbirth grow stronger. It is understood that the hormone oxytocin plays a significant role in stimulating contractions during labour, which helps to move a baby down the birth canal. It is not known, however, how these contractions increase and sustain their strength during hours of labour. A team at Liverpool investigated how uterine contractions grow stronger when the human body's 'biological rules' dictates that contractions ...

SEATTLE, WA, AUGUST 12, 2015 - If a defensive coordinator of a National Football League (NFL) team could predict with high accuracy whether their team's opponent will call a pass or run play during a game, he would become a rock star in the league and soon be a head coach candidate. William Burton, an industrial engineering student who is minoring in statistics at North Carolina State University (NCSU), and collaborator Michael Dickey, a statistics major who graduated from NCSU in May, have built a statistical model that predicts the play-calling tendency of NFL teams ...

SEATTLE, WA, AUGUST 12, 2015 - The growing popularity and use of social media around the world is presenting new opportunities for statisticians to glean insightful information from the infinite stream of posts, tweets and other online communications that will help improve public safety. Two such examples--one that enhances systems to track foodborne illness outbreaks and another designed to improve disaster-response activities--were presented this week at the 2015 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM 2015) in Seattle. Tracking Foodborne Illness Outbreaks: In a presentation ...

SEATTLE, WA, AUGUST 12, 2015 - Panelists talked about various aspects of value-added models, commonly referred to as VAMs, while the discussant posed a new question about the use of evaluation models during a panel discussion on the hot-button topic today at the 2015 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM 2015) in Seattle. The panel discussion, titled "Value-Added Models: A Primer and Discussion," featured four experts in the areas of statistics, education research and VAMs. They are: Jennifer E. Broatch, assistant professor of statistics at Arizona State University Jennifer ...

New UBC research into brain cancer suggests treatments should target the cells around a tumor to stop it from spreading. UBC research team Christian Naus, Wun Chey Sin and John Bechberger study glioma, the most aggressive form of adult brain cancer. Glioma has a low five-year survival rate of 30 per cent because it is difficult to completely remove cancer cells without compromising brain functions and chemotherapy and radiotherapy do not prevent the regrowth of remaining cancer cells. With this new research, the team reveals an alternative route to rein in the glioma ...