HOUSTON – (Sept. 24, 2014) – The cost of monthly premiums for health insurance plans for Texans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) can vary by hundreds of dollars, depending on a person's income and the level of coverage chosen, according to a report released today by the Episcopal Health Foundation and Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. The report found Texans earning about $17,000 a year were offered free premiums on some ACA Marketplace health insurance plans because of federal tax credits. However, a person who makes around $35,000 a year would ...

Researchers say there should be an international database containing the very latest information about organ donations and transplants, so policy makers can make informed decisions on whether to adopt an opt-out or opt-in system. The call comes after a study, carried out by The University of Nottingham, the University of Stirling and Northumbria University, showed that overall an opt-out system might provide a greater number of organs for transplant but many factors can influence the success of either system and a repository of accessible information would help individual ...

From recreational boats and fishing vessels to commercial cruise ships and private marinas, a newly published study shows that oil discharges related to human maritime activity on the Canadian coast is posing a major threat to marine ecosystems in the Pacific Ocean. The study – published in the August edition of the journal Applied Geography, with University of Calgary associate professor in geography Stefania Bertazzon as lead author – provides a geospatial analysis of oil discharges in the Canadian Pacific Ocean. The findings show that a large portion of oil discharge ...

On September 30, 2014, in Washington, DC, higher education and health leaders will release a report that is the first to examine nationwide the impact and use of holistic review—a university admissions process that assesses an applicant's unique experiences alongside traditional measures of academic achievement such as grades and test scores—for students pursuing careers in the health professions. Many colleges and universities use a holistic admission process to select students. The practice has become more popular in health fields such as medicine, because it enables ...

The liver provides critical functions, such as ridding the body of toxins. Its failure can be deadly, and there are few options for fixing it. But scientists now report in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces a way to potentially inject stem cells from tonsils, a body part we don't need, to repair damaged livers — all without surgery. Byeongmoon Jeong and colleagues point out that currently, the only established method for treating liver failure or severe cases of liver disease is complete or partial transplantation. But the need is much greater than the number ...

A new linguistic study may make it possible to more accurately predict the dialect features people use based on their demographic characteristics and where they live. In a new article published in the September 2014 issue of Language, Martijn Wieling (University of Groningen) and colleagues used statistical modeling techniques to predict whether speakers in Tuscany use words from standard Italian or words unique to local dialects. The article, "Lexical differences between Tuscan dialects and standard Italian: Accounting for geographic and socio-demographic variation using ...

Over the past 20 years, a strange idea called a "weak value" has taken root in quantum information science. Many of the things you can do with quantum technologies entail being able to gain information from quantum systems. But there is a quantum conundrum: we can't say what a particle is doing when we're not looking at it, but when we do look at it, we change its behaviour. But what if we could look "a little"? Well, that's a weak measurement, a concept which is central to the notion of a weak value. The basic idea of weak measurement is to gain a little bit of information ...

In the study, conducted by researchers David Just PhD., Ozge Sigirci, and Brian Wansink PhD. author of the forthcoming book, Slim by Design: Mindless Eating Solutions for Everyday Life, 139 diners in an Italian all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant were either charged $4 or $8 for the lunch buffet. The buffet offered pizza, salad, breadsticks, pasta, and soup. After finishing, diners were asked to rate the taste of the pizza and how much they enjoyed the dining experience on a 9 point scale. "People set their expectation of taste partially based on the price—and it becomes ...

An enzyme found in all living things could hold the key to combatting deadly diseases such as sleeping sickness, a study suggests. Research into the enzyme, which helps cells convert nutrients into energy, has shown that it is activated in different ways in various species. Researchers say this discovery creates an opportunity to design drugs that block activity of the enzyme – known as pyruvate kinase – in species that cause infection. Blocking the enzyme would effectively kill the parasite, without affecting the same enzyme in the patient. Findings from the study ...

Tel Aviv — "I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that cyber defense solutions will serve as the essential basis for human development and economic growth in this century — I think it's happening before our very eyes," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told leading policymakers and cybersecurity experts at the 4th Annual International Cybersecurity Conference, held at Tel Aviv University on September 14-15, 2014. The signature event of Cyber Week 2014, one of the most important annual cyber events in the world, the TAU conference series presented the full spectrum ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – September 24, 2014) St. Jude Children's Research Hospital investigators found that adjusting treatment based on early response to chemotherapy made a life-saving difference to young patients with an acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) subtype associated with a poor outcome. The study appeared in the September 20 edition of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The results are good news for children and adolescents with Philadelphia chromosome-like ALL (Ph-like ALL), a subtype that until now was associated with a poor prognosis. Ph-like ALL accounts for as ...

A recent study by the University of Eastern Finland shows that scaling maximal oxygen uptake and maximal workload by body weight confounds measures of cardiorespiratory fitness. It has been a common practice in exercise testing to scale the results by body weight and, according to researchers, this practice should be abandoned. More reliable data on cardiorespiratory fitness can be observed by using lean mass proportional measures. The results were published recently in Clinical Physiology and Functional Imaging. Exercise tests, such as the maximal cycle ergometer exercise ...

As tech company LG demonstrated this summer with the unveiling of its 18-inch flexible screen, the next generation of roll-up displays is tantalizingly close. Researchers are now reporting in the journal ACS Nano a new, inexpensive and simple way to make transparent, flexible transistors — the building blocks of electronics — that could help bring roll-up smartphones with see-through displays and other bendable gadgets to consumers in just a few years. Yang Yang and colleagues note that transistors are traditionally made in a multi-step photolithography process, which ...

Concerns that fluids from hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," are contaminating drinking water abound. Now, scientists are bringing to light another angle that adds to the controversy. A new study, appearing in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology, has found that discharge of fracking wastewaters to rivers, even after passage through wastewater treatment plants, could be putting the drinking water supplies of downstream cities at risk. William A. Mitch, Avner Vengosh and colleagues point out that the disposal of fracking wastewater poses a major challenge ...

HUNTSVILLE, TX 9/24/14 -- Although membership in a gang often is depicted as a lifelong commitment, the typical gang member joins at age 13 and only stays active for about two years, according to a study at Sam Houston State University. "Gang membership is not a fixed identity or a scarlet letter," said David Pyrooz in an article published in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology. "Media and popular culture have led to misconceptions about gangs and gang membership, chief among them the myth of permanence, as reflected in the quote from West Side Story –'When you're ...

Understanding how atoms "glide" and "climb" on the surface of 2D crystals like tungsten disulphide may pave the way for researchers to develop materials with unusual or unique characteristics, according to an international team of researchers. "If we don't understand what is behind the materials' characteristics caused by these defects, then we can't engineer the right properties into devices," said Nasim Alem, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, Penn State. "With a closer look, we might find that some of the defects are no good, that we don't want ...

September 24, 2014 – A technique developed by astronomers seeking a clear view of distant objects in space is being intensively studied as a new approach to measuring and correcting visual abnormalities. The October issue of Optometry and Vision Science, official journal of the American Academy of Optometry, is a theme issue devoted to research on wavefront refraction and correction. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. The special issue presents new research on the use of wavefront analysis for assessing subtle, ...

Princeton University researchers have developed a new method to increase the brightness, efficiency and clarity of LEDs, which are widely used on smartphones and portable electronics as well as becoming increasingly common in lighting. Using a new nanoscale structure, the researchers, led by electrical engineering professor Stephen Chou, increased the brightness and efficiency of LEDs made of organic materials (flexible carbon-based sheets) by 58 percent. The researchers also report their method should yield similar improvements in LEDs made in inorganic (silicon-based) ...

Confusion over a 1997 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rule that eases the way for food manufacturers to use ingredients "generally regarded as safe," or GRAS, has inspired a new initiative by food makers. Food safety advocates say the current GRAS process allows substances into the food supply that might pose a health risk, while industry defends its record. An article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN) details what changes are on the table. Melody M. Bomgardner, a senior editor at C&EN, explains that the rule, which was never finalized, was initially established ...

Washington D.C., September 24, 2014 – A study published in the MONTH 2014 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry found that children who were conceived either less than 1 year or more than 5 years after the birth of their prior sibling were more likely to be diagnosed with autism than children conceived following an interval of 2-5 years. Using data from the Finnish Prenatal Study of Autism (FIPS-A), a group of researchers led by Keely Cheslack-Postava, PhD, of Columbia University, analyzed records from 7371 children born between ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — More women with cancer in one breast are opting to have both breasts removed to reduce their risk of future cancer. New research shows that in the long term, most have no regrets. Mayo Clinic surveyed hundreds of women with breast cancer who had double mastectomies between 1960 and 1993 and found that nearly all would make the same choice again. The findings are published in the journal Annals of Surgical Oncology. The study made a surprising finding: While most women were satisfied with their decision whether they followed it with breast reconstruction ...

The shorter the interval between two explosions in the solar atmosphere, the more likely it is that the second flare will be stronger than the first one. ETH Professor Hans Jürgen Herrmann and his team have been able to demonstrate this, using model calculations. The amount of energy released in solar flares is truly enormous – in fact, it is millions of times greater than the energy produced in volcanic eruptions. Strong explosions cause a discharge of mass from the outer part of the solar atmosphere, the corona. If a coronal mass ejection hits the earth, it can cause ...

How people perceive and taste alcohol depends on genetic factors, and that influences whether they "like" and consume alcoholic beverages, according to researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences. In the first study to show that the sensations from sampled alcohol vary as a function of genetics, researchers focused on three chemosensory genes -- two bitter-taste receptor genes known as TAS2R13 and TAS2R38 and a burn receptor gene, TRPV1. The research was also the first to consider whether variation in the burn receptor gene might influence alcohol sensations, ...

(Philadelphia, PA) – Areas of the brain that respond to reward and pleasure are linked to the ability of a drug known as butorphanol to relieve itch, according to new research led by Gil Yosipovitch, MD, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Dermatology at Temple University School of Medicine (TUSM), and Director of the Temple Itch Center. The findings point to the involvement of the brain's opioid receptors—widely known for their roles in pain, reward, and addiction—in itch relief, potentially opening up new avenues to the development of treatments for chronic itch. The ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Researchers have developed two new anticancer peptide vaccines and two peptide inhibitors as part of a larger peptide immunotherapy effort at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James). Two studies, published in the journal OncoImmunology, identify new peptide vaccines and inhibitors that target the HER-3 and IGF-1R receptors. All four agents elicited significant anti-tumor responses in human cancer cell lines and in animal models. The studies suggest ...