Do you believe in science? Your faith in science may actually make you more likely to trust information that appears scientific but really doesn't tell you much. According to a new Cornell Food and Brand Lab study, published in Public Understanding of Science, trivial elements such as graphs or formulas can lead consumers to believe products are more effective. "Anything that looks scientific can make information you read a lot more convincing," says the study's lead author Aner Tal, PhD, "The scientific halo of graphs, formulas, and other trivial elements that look scientific ...

During the 1930s, North America endured the Dust Bowl, a prolonged era of dryness that withered crops and dramatically altered where the population settled. Land-based precipitation records from the years leading up to the Dust Bowl are consistent with the telltale drying-out period associated with a persistent dry weather pattern, but they can't explain why the drought was so pronounced and long-lasting. The mystery lies in the fact that land-based precipitation tells only part of the climate story. Building accurate computer reconstructions of historical global precipitation ...

Our mood can affect how we walk — slump-shouldered if we're sad, bouncing along if we're happy. Now researchers have shown it works the other way too — making people imitate a happy or sad way of walking actually affects their mood. Subjects who were prompted to walk in a more depressed style, with less arm movement and their shoulders rolled forward, experienced worse moods than those who were induced to walk in a happier style, according to the study published in the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry. CIFAR Senior Fellow Nikolaus ...

Rochester, Minn. – The American Academy of Neurology (AAN) and the American Association of Neuromuscular & Electrodiagnostic Medicine (AANEM) offer a new guideline on how to determine what genetic tests may best diagnose a person's subtype of limb-girdle or distal muscular dystrophy. The guideline is published in the October 14, 2014, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the AAN. Researchers reviewed all of the available studies on the muscular dystrophy, a group of genetic diseases in which muscle fibers are unusually susceptible to damage, as ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), many teens skip breakfast, which increases their likelihood of overeating and eventual weight gain. Statistics show that the number of adolescents struggling with obesity, which elevates the risk for chronic health problems, has quadrupled in the past three decades. Now, MU researchers have found that eating breakfast, particularly meals rich in protein, increases young adults' levels of a brain chemical associated with feelings of reward, which may reduce food cravings and overeating ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — To address the HIV epidemic in Mexico is to address it among men who have sex with men (MSM), because they account for a large percentage of the country's new infections, says Omar Galárraga, assistant professor of health services policy and practice in the Brown University School of Public Health. A major source of the new infections is Mexico City's male-to-male sex trade, Galárraga has found. In his research, including detailed interviews and testing with hundreds of male sex workers on the city's streets and in ...

Coordinating product placement with advertising in the same television program can reduce audience loss over commercial breaks by 10%, according to a new study in the Articles in Advance section of Marketing Science, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). Synergy or Interference: The Effect of Product Placement on Commercial Break Audience Decline is by David A. Schweidel, Associate Professor of Marketing at Goizueta Business School, Emory University, Natasha Zhang Foutz, Assistant Professor of Marketing at McIntire School ...

UPTON, NY—The proteins that drive DNA replication—the force behind cellular growth and reproduction—are some of the most complex machines on Earth. The multistep replication process involves hundreds of atomic-scale moving parts that rapidly interact and transform. Mapping that dense molecular machinery is one of the most promising and challenging frontiers in medicine and biology. Now, scientists have pinpointed crucial steps in the beginning of the replication process, including surprising structural details about the enzyme that "unzips" and splits ...

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Oct. 15, 2014—Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have demonstrated an additive manufacturing method to control the structure and properties of metal components with precision unmatched by conventional manufacturing processes. Ryan Dehoff, staff scientist and metal additive manufacturing lead at the Department of Energy's Manufacturing Demonstration Facility at ORNL, presented the research this week in an invited presentation at the Materials Science & Technology 2014 conference in Pittsburgh. "We can now ...

October 15, 2014 – A recently concluded demonstration project made meaningful progress toward introducing a "patient-centered medical home" approach at "safety net" practices serving vulnerable and underserved populations. Lessons learned in the course of developing and implementing the Safety Net Medical Home Initiative (SNMHI) are featured in a special November supplement to Medical Care. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. The supplement presents nine original papers sharing "experience and learning" from ...

AMES, Iowa – The stories are shocking and heartbreaking, but they are often disjointed and hard to follow. In severe cases, the narratives are even more chaotic. This is reality for victims of workplace bullying and a major reason why they stay silent, said Stacy Tye-Williams, an assistant professor of communications studies and English at Iowa State University. No one expects to go to work and feel as though they are back on the school playground, but bullying is all too common for many workers. Approximately 54 million workers, or 35 percent of U.S. employees, ...

A study published online today in the journal Conservation Physiology has shown that the epaulette shark (Hemiscyllium ocellatum) displays physiological tolerance to elevated carbon dioxide (CO2) in its environment after being exposed to CO2 levels equivalent to those that are predicted for their natural habitats in the near future. Atmospheric CO2 levels have increased by almost 40% in the last 250 years, and the world's oceans have absorbed more than 30% of the additional CO2. The resulting rise in seawater CO2 and associated reduction in pH – known as ocean ...

A shark's habitat can reduce its sensitivity to rising CO2 levels, according to Australian scientists. Globally, ocean acidification - linked to emissions of greenhouse gases - remains a major concern and scientists say it will harm many marine species over the next century. Researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE) at James Cook University have found that the epaulette shark, a species that shelters within reefs and copes with low oxygen levels, is able to tolerate increased carbon dioxide in the water without any obvious physical ...

A federal prescription-subsidy program for low-income women on Medicare significantly improved their adherence to hormone therapy to prevent the recurrence of breast cancer after surgery. "Our findings suggest that out-of-pocket costs are a significant barrier" to women complying with hormone therapy, said Dr. Alana Biggers, assistant professor of clinical medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine, and lead investigator on the study. Programs that lower these costs can "improve adherence -- and, hopefully, breast cancer outcomes -- for low-income ...

Alcohol consumption isn't the only thing a breath analysis can reveal. Scientists have been studying its possible use for diagnosing a wide range of conditions in humans — and now in the beloved bottlenose dolphin. In a report in the ACS journal Analytical Chemistry, one team describes a new instrument that can analyze the metabolites in breath from dolphins, which have been dying in alarming numbers along the Atlantic coast this year. Cristina E. Davis and colleagues note that studying dolphins' health is about more than preserving their populations — the ...

Arsenic, a well-known poison, can be taken out of drinking water using sophisticated treatment methods. But in places that lack the equipment or technical know-how required to remove it, it still laces drinking water and makes people sick. To tackle this problem, scientists have come up with a new low-cost, simple way to remove arsenic using leftovers from another known health threat — cigarettes. They report their method in ACS' journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research. Jiaxing Li and colleagues explain that naturally occurring and industry-related arsenic ...

The Ebola virus is spreading rapidly and to an unexpected extent. The outbreak does not follow the patterns experienced in the past and the virus shows a new disease dynamic in regions, where it has never been recorded before. For this reason, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, acatech – the German Academy of Science and Engineering, and the Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities have presented a statement on the Ebola epidemic today. In the statement the academies call for the following consequences to be taken: To combat the ...

A blend of photos and technology takes a new twist on studying cliff landscapes and how they were formed. Dylan Ward, a University of Cincinnati assistant professor of geology, will present a case study on this unique technology application at The Geological Society of America's Annual Meeting & Exposition. The meeting takes place Oct. 19-22, in Vancouver. Ward is using a method called Structure-From-Motion Photogrammetry – computational photo image processing techniques – to study the formation of cliff landscapes in Colorado and Utah and to understand how ...

Researchers have linked increased resistance to bacterial pneumonia in female mice to an enzyme activated by the female sex hormone estrogen. Females are naturally more resistant to respiratory infections than males. Now, an international team of scientists has shown that increased resistance to bacterial pneumonia in female mice is linked to the enzyme nitric oxide synthase 3 (NOS3). They also show that this enzyme is ultimately activated by the release of the female sex hormone estrogen. The team, lead by Professor Lester Kobzik at the Harvard University School of ...

Change in disturbance regimes -- rather than a change in climate -- is largely responsible for altering the composition of Eastern forests, according to a researcher in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences. Forests in the Eastern United States remain in a state of "disequilibrium" stemming from the clear-cutting and large-scale burning that occurred in the late 1800s and early 1900s, contends Marc Abrams, professor of forest ecology and physiology. Moreover, Abrams noted, since about 1930 -- during the Smokey Bear era -- aggressive forest-fire suppression has ...

Next year, the European Commission is set to release guidelines for warning labels on products made with lavender oil, which reportedly can cause allergic reactions for some people. But lavender growers in France are putting up a fight, and some are even threatening to quit the business altogether if the rules go into effect, according to an article in Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society. Alex Scott, a senior editor at C&EN, writes that at least one lavender producer has notified the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) that ...

As medical personnel and public health officials are responding to the first reported cases of Ebola Virus in the United States, many of the safety and treatment procedures for treating the virus and preventing its spread are being reexamined. One of the tenets for minimizing the risk of spreading the disease has been a 21-day quarantine period for individuals who might have been exposed to the virus. But a new study by Charles Haas, PhD, a professor in Drexel's College of Engineering, suggests that 21 days might not be enough to completely prevent spread of the virus. Haas's ...

The phase-out of traditional incandescent bulbs in the U.S. and elsewhere, as well as a growing interest in energy efficiency, has given LED lighting a sales boost. However, that trend could be short-lived as key materials known as rare earth elements become more expensive. Scientists have now designed new materials for making household LED bulbs without using these ingredients. They report their development in ACS' Journal of the American Chemical Society. LED lighting, which can last years longer than conventional bulbs, is an energy-efficient alternative. Switching ...

New Rochelle, NY, October 15, 2014—Chronic inflammation caused by activation of the human immune system contributes to a large and rapidly growing list of diseases including some cancers, cardiovascular disease, metabolic disorders, and autoimmune diseases. Significant advances in understanding the role that the cytokine-mediated JAK/STAT signaling network and pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) play in regulating immune responses and their potential as novel targets for developing potent new therapies are presented in a Review article in Journal of Interferon & ...

DARIEN, IL – A study of hospitalized cardiac patients is the first to show that effective treatment with positive airway pressure therapy reduces 30-day hospital readmission rates and emergency department visits in patients with both heart disease and sleep apnea. The results underscore the importance of the "Stop the Snore" campaign of the National Healthy Sleep Awareness Project, a collaboration between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American Academy of Sleep Medicine, Sleep Research Society and other partners. Results show that none of the cardiac ...