WASHINGTON - Searching the Internet for information may make people feel smarter than they actually are, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. "The Internet is such a powerful environment, where you can enter any question, and you basically have access to the world's knowledge at your fingertips," said lead researcher Matthew Fisher, a fourth-year doctoral candidate in psychology at Yale University. "It becomes easier to confuse your own knowledge with this external source. When people are truly on their own, they may be wildly ...

PHILADELPHIA - HIV (human immunodeficiency virus)-positive kidney transplant patients experienced superior outcomes when compared to kidney transplant patients with Hepatitis C and those infected with both HIV and Hepatitis C, according to a study led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and published online in Kidney International. The research team examined outcomes of 124,035 adult kidney recipients transplanted between 1996 and 2013, and found the three-year survival rate of HIV patients (89 percent) was actually very ...

Inhalable particles include all particulate matter with a diameter smaller than 10 micrometers (PM10). In this group a distinction is made between even finer particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5) in diameter, which can deeply enter the lung, and ultrafine particles with diameters less than 0.1 micrometers (100 nanometers), which can also enter the blood stream. The research team at Helmholtz Zentrum München led by Prof. Dr. Annette Peters, head of the research program Epidemiology at the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD), and Dr. Alexandra Schneider ...

Scientists at the John Innes Centre have discovered why the first buds of spring come increasingly earlier as the climate changes. Dr Steven Penfield at the JIC found that plants have an ideal temperature for seed set and flower at a particular time of year to make sure their seed develops just as the weather has warmed to this 'sweet spot' temperature. Dr Penfield, working with Dr Vicki Springthorpe at the University of York, found the sweet spot for the model plant Arabidposis thaliana is between 14-15?C. Seeds that develop in temperatures lower than 14?C will almost ...

Saurichthys is a predatory fish characterized by a long thin body and a sharply pointed snout with numerous teeth. This distinctive ray-finned fish lived in marine and freshwater environments all over the world 252-201 million years ago during the Triassic period. Two new species of this extinct fish have been discovered by paleontologists at the University of Zurich, working in collaboration with researchers in Germany and China. The first species, «Saurichthys breviabdominalis», is named for its relatively short body and the second, «Saurichthys rieppeli», ...

Darwin's evolutionary theory predicts survival of the fittest. So why do different survival tactics co-exist, if evolution should always favour the winning strategy? To answer that question scientists at the Universities of Bath and Manchester have been studying a single-celled amoeba, also known as slime mould, which displays certain behaviours that have been labelled as "cheating" or "cooperating". In a study, published in the prestigious journal Current Biology, the team found that cheaters don't necessarily win in terms of overall survival, suggesting that biologists ...

Scientists at the University of Bonn, together with colleagues from China, UK and Poland, have described the oldest evidence of brood care in insects: it is in a female scale insect with her young that is encased in amber as a fossil. The approximately100-million-year-old "snapshot" from the Earth's history shows the six millimetre long tiny insect with a wax cocoon, which protected the eggs from predators and drying out plus associated young nymphs. The researchers are now presenting their results in the respected journal eLIFE. The small female insect with the waxy ...

Face recognition security on smartphones can be significantly improved if users store an 'average' photo of themselves, according to new research by scientists at the University of York. A research team led by Dr David Robertson, of the Department of Psychology's FaceVar laboratory at York, found that combining different pictures of the user, rather than a single 'target' image, leads to much better recognition across all kinds of daily settings. The research is published in the journal PLOS ONE. The researchers examined the performance of the 'face unlock' system ...

Researchers at the Mechanobiology Institute (MBI) at the National University of Singapore have discovered that the inherent 'handedness' of molecular structures directs the behaviour of individual cells and confers them the ability to sense the difference between left and right. This is a significant step forward in the understanding of cellular biology. This discovery was published in Nature Cell Biology on 23 March 2015. Cellular decision making Our bodies are made up of hundreds of different types of cells, each of which performs a unique and highly specialized ...

Researchers from the UK and Malaysia have detected a human fingerprint deep in the Borneo rainforest in Southeast Asia. Cold winds blowing from the north carry industrial pollutants from East Asia to the equator, with implications for air quality in the region. Once there, the pollutants can travel higher into the atmosphere and impact the ozone layer. The research is published today in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, an open access journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU). Rainforests are often associated with pure, unpolluted air, but in Borneo air quality ...

WASHINGTON-- The Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE) proudly announces the publication of a Health Education & Behavior (HE&B) supplement devoted to the latest research and practice on policy and environmental approaches to foster healthy communities. The April 2015 supplement, "The Evidence for Policy and Environmental Approaches to Promoting Health," comprises a dozen peer-reviewed articles and two perspectives examining the state-of-the-evidence on what's working and what's needed at the community, institutional and societal levels to promote good health across ...

A world first study revealing the presence of two antibodies in a sub-group of children experiencing their first episode of psychosis affirms a longstanding recognition that auto-immune disorders play a significant role in psychiatric illness. Antibodies defend the body against bacterial, viral, and other invaders but sometimes the body makes antibodies that attack healthy cells. In these cases, autoimmune disorders develop. These include conditions such as multiple sclerosis (MS), rheumatoid arthritis and Type 1 diabetes. This 'immune hypothesis' is supported by new ...

Almost every pig carries harmless strains of the S. suis bacterium - such strains are known as 'commensal' strains. However, a more virulent group of strains of the bacteria also exist, which cause disease in pigs worldwide and are a major driver of antibiotic use for prevention. Increasingly, this group of strains is also implicated in serious human diseases such as meningitis and septicaemia. In order to understand the genetic basis of disease in S. suis, an international study, led by the Bacterial Respiratory Diseases of Pigs-1 Technology (BRaDP1T) consortium, examined ...

New research from the University of Toronto has scientists re-thinking how a lethal fungus grows and kills immune cells. The study hints at a new approach to therapy for Candida albicans, one of the most common causes of bloodstream infections. Previously, scientists thought that Candida albicans spread by changing from a single, round cell to a long string of cells, or filaments. They thought this shape change allowed the fungus to move through the bloodstream and let its filaments penetrate tissues and destroy immune cells. But the new study, published today in Nature ...

Survey responses from 19,000 people in 18 European countries, including the UK, showed that "the notion that big welfare states are associated with widespread cultures of dependency, or other adverse consequences of poor short term incentives to work, receives little support." Sociologists Dr Kjetil van der Wel and Dr Knut Halvorsen examined responses to the statement 'I would enjoy having a paid job even if I did not need the money' put to the interviewees for the European Social Survey in 2010. In a paper published in the journal Work, employment and society they ...

PISCATAWAY, NJ - Children who get a taste of their parents' wine now and then may be more likely than their peers to start drinking by high school, according to a new report in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. Researchers found that, of 561 students in a long-term study, those who'd "sipped" alcohol by sixth grade were five times more likely than their peers to down a full drink by the time they were in high school. And they were four times more likely to have binged or been drunk. The findings do not prove that early sips of alcohol are to blame, said lead ...

Philadelphia, PA, March 31, 2015 - Ultrasound technology has evolved dramatically in recent years. A group of noted obstetricians and gynecologists maintain that ultrasound is more cost-effective and safer than other imaging modalities for imaging the female pelvis and should be the first imaging modality used for patients with pelvic symptoms. Writing in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and supporting an American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine (AIUM at http://www.AIUM.org) initiative, they urge practitioners to "put ultrasound first." In 2012, the ...

As the United States faces transplant waiting lists that continue to grow longer over time, there is increasing debate about the proper way to incentivize living donations. Transplant professionals are trying to find ways to eliminate any financial disincentives without crossing the line to paying for organs. A new article published in the American Journal of Transplantation highlights possible solutions discussed by leaders within the American Society of Transplantation (AST) and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons (ASTS) at a recent workshop. Due to organ shortages, ...

This news release is available in French. In addition to their physical injuries, women who are victims of domestic violence are also at a greater risk of mental health problems such as depression and psychotic symptoms. These are the findings of a study that was just published by a team of researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King's College London in England, the Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal (IUSMM), and the University of Montreal. "We studied the impact of domestic violence on the risk of mental ...

Speaking in public is the top fear for many people. Now, researchers from the Human-Computer Interaction Group at the University of Rochester have developed an intelligent user interface for "smart glasses" that gives real-time feedback to the speaker on volume modulation and speaking rate, while being minimally distracting. The Rochester team describes the system, which they have called Rhema after the Greek word for "utterance," in a paper that will be presented on Tuesday, March 31 at the Association for Computer Machinery's Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI) conference ...

CLEVELAND - Tweet it. Snap it. Pin it. Post it...or however else you want to share it with the masses scouring the Internet searching for common ground connectivity. But, should doctors peer behind the privacy curtain of potential patients to help avert or discover more severe problems? University Hospitals Case Medical Center Psychiatrist Stephanie Pope, MD, examined the impact of social media on mental health care and treatment. She specifically investigated how the public forums could help diagnoses in clinical practice as well as serving as behavioral predictors. ...

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences used information collected from hundreds of skin swabs to produce three-dimensional maps of molecular and microbial variations across the body. These maps provide a baseline for future studies of the interplay between the molecules that make up our skin, the microbes that live on us, our personal hygiene routines and other environmental factors. The study, published March 30 by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may help further our understanding of ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Got milk? If you are overweight and have osteoarthritis, you may want to bone up on your dairy products that have vitamin D. According to a University of Florida study, higher levels of vitamin D may decrease pain and improve function in obese individuals with osteoarthritis. Findings published in the January issue of The Clinical Journal of Pain indicate that obese individuals who suffer from osteoarthritis and have adequate vitamin D levels could walk, balance and rise from sitting to standing better than obese participants with insufficient vitamin ...

Humans have been inspired by nature since the beginning of time. We mimic nature to develop new technologies, with examples ranging from machinery to pharmaceuticals to new materials. Planes are modelled on birds and many drugs have their origins in plants. Researchers at the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering have taken it a step further: in order to develop an extremely sensitive temperature sensor they took a close look at temperature-sensitive plants. However, they did not mimic the properties of the plants; instead, they developed a hybrid material that ...

Scientists have found a way to measure the unseen toll that environmental stress places on living creatures -- showing that they can rev up their metabolism to work more than twice as hard as normal to cope with change. Stresses from climate change such as rising temperatures and increasing ocean acidity can edge an organism closer and closer to the brink of death without visible signs. In fact, the researchers -- led by USC's Donal Manahan -- were surprised at just how good organisms can be at hiding the stress they're under. Manahan and his colleagues found that increasing ...