TAMPA, Fla. -- Cognitive impairment can occur in cancer patients who are treated with a variety of therapies, including radiation therapy, hormone therapy, and chemotherapy. After chemotherapy treatment it is commonly called "chemo brain." Signs of cognitive impairment include forgetfulness, inability to concentrate, problems recalling information, trouble multi-tasking and becoming slower at processing information. The number of people who experience cognitive problems following cancer therapy is broad, with an estimate range of 15 to 70 percent. There have been several ...

Lüneburg. Entrepreneurship as vocation? As a talent, which reveals itself early on and is the requirement for a successful start-up? This is the prevailing - yet wrong - view. Entrepreneurship is an acquired skill. The capacity to think and act in entrepreneurial terms is present in many people - unbeknown to most of them. Action-oriented entrepreneurship training sessions can unlock dormant potential and awaken entrepreneurial spirit. This is the findings of a research team, comprised of scholars from Leuphana University of Lüneburg, the University of Singapore, ...

Secondhand exposure to cannabis smoke under "extreme conditions," such as an unventilated room or enclosed vehicle, can cause nonsmokers to feel the effects of the drug, have minor problems with memory and coordination, and in some cases test positive for the drug in a urinalysis. Those are the findings of a Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine study, reported online this month in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence. Cannabis is the most widely used illicit drug in the world. "Many people are exposed to secondhand cannabis smoke," says lead author Evan S. Herrmann, ...

Bethesda, MD (May 13, 2015) -- A simple blood test can be used to predict which chronic hepatitis C patients will respond to interferon-based therapy, according to a report in the May issue of Cellular and Molecular Gastroenterology and Hepatology,1 the basic science journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. "While highly effective direct-acting antivirals have become the new standard of care for patients with hepatitis C, these treatments come with a hefty price tag," said lead study author Philipp Solbach, MD, from Hannover Medical School, Niedersachsen, ...

New research from the University of Kent suggests the fashion industry could benefit from using average-sized models rather than size zero in marketing campaigns. The research, led by Dr Xuemei Bian, of Kent Business School, considered the impact of using average and zero-sized models in marketing campaigns for both established and fictitious new fashion brands. In three studies, the researchers asked women aged 18-25 which size of model they preferred. The studies also considered the role the women's self-esteem played in their preference. Dr Bian and her team found ...

ANN ARBOR--A new material developed at the University of Michigan stays liquid more than 200 degrees Fahrenheit below its expected freezing point, but a light touch can cause it to form yellow crystals that glow under ultraviolet light. Even living cells sitting on a film of the supercooled liquid produce crystal footprints, which means that it's about a million times more sensitive than other known molecules that change color in response to pressure. The material could have applications as a new kind of sensor for living cells, while the mechanism behind its unusual ...

More than half of patients who report "weekend-only" drug use end up expanding their drug use to weekdays, too -- suggesting that primary care clinicians should monitor patients who acknowledge "recreational" drug use, says a new study by Boston University public health and medicine researchers. The study, published in the journal Annals of Family Medicine and led by Judith Bernstein, professor of community health sciences at the BU School of Public Health (BUSPH), recommends that clinicians use "caution in accepting recreational drug use as reassuring," and that they ...

People's personalities tend to vary somewhat depending on the season in which they are born, and astrological signs may have developed as a useful system for remembering these patterns, according to an analysis by UConn researcher Mark Hamilton. Such seasonal effects may not be clear in individuals, but can be discerned through averaging personality traits across large cohorts born at the same time of year. Hamilton's analysis will be published in Comprehensive Psychology on 13 May. Psychologists have known that certain personality traits tend to be associated with certain ...

This news release is available in Japanese. Pollutants emitted by factories and car exhausts affect humans who breathe in these harmful gases and also aggravate climate change up in the atmosphere. Being able to detect such emissions is a critically needed measure. New research by the Nanoparticles by Design Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), in collaboration with the Materials Center Leoben Austria and the Austrian Centre for Electron Microscopy and Nanoanalysis has developed an efficient way to improve methods ...

(Boston)--In the largest study to date that examines Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a risk factor for cancer, researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), have shown no evidence of an association. The study, which appears in the European Journal of Epidemiology, is consistent with other population-based studies that report stressful life events generally are not associated with cancer incidence. In addition to corroborating results of other studies, this large population sample allowed for important stratified analyses that showed no strong ...

Our bodies' hormones work together to tell us when to eat and when to stop. But for many people who are obese, this system is off-balance. Now scientists have designed a hormone-like compound to suppress hunger and boost satiety, or a full feeling, at the same time. They report in ACS' Journal of Medicinal Chemistry that obese mice given the compound for 14 days had a tendency to eat less than the other groups. In their study, Constance Chollet and colleagues targeted two main receptors in the body that help keep appetite in check. When hormones bind to ghrelin receptors, ...

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 13, 2015--Policymakers and practitioners have grown increasingly interested in measures of personal qualities other than cognitive ability--including self-control, grit, growth mindset, gratitude, purpose, emotional intelligence, and other beneficial personal qualities--that lead to student success. However, they need to move cautiously before using existing measures to evaluate educators, programs, and policies, or diagnosing children as having "non-cognitive" deficits, according to a review by Angela L. Duckworth and David Scott Yeager published ...

Coffee has gone from dietary foe to friend in recent years, partly due to the revelation that it's rich in antioxidants. Now even spent coffee-grounds are gaining attention for being chock-full of these compounds, which have potential health benefits. In ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, researchers explain how to extract antioxidants from the grounds. They then determined just how concentrated the antioxidants are. María-Paz de Peña and colleagues note that coffee -- one of the most popular drinks in the world -- is a rich source of a group ...

Several class-action lawsuits filed recently against the makers of flushable wet-wipes have brought to light a serious -- and unsavory -- problem: The popular cleaning products might be clogging sewer systems. But whether the manufacturers should be held accountable is still up in the air, according to an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society. Jessica Morrison, assistant editor at C&EN, reports that New York City alone claims to have spent more than $18 million over six years clearing wipes from its wastewater ...

Rats have more heart than you might think. When one is drowning, another will put out a helping paw to rescue its mate. This is especially true for rats that previously had a watery near-death experience, says Nobuya Sato and colleagues of the Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan. Their findings are published in Springer's journal Animal Cognition. Recent research has shown that a rat will help members of its own species to escape from a tubelike cage. The helping rat will show such prosocial behavior even if it does not gain any advantage from it. To see whether these ...

DURHAM, N.C. - Smokers who are able to quit might actually be hard-wired for success, according to a study from Duke Medicine. The study, published in Neuropsychopharmacology, showed greater connectivity among certain brain regions in people who successfully quit smoking compared to those who tried and failed. The researchers analyzed MRI scans of 85 people taken one month before they attempted to quit. All participants stopped smoking and the researchers tracked their progress for 10 weeks. Forty-one participants relapsed. Looking back at the brain scans of the 44 ...

Beekeepers across the United States lost more than 40 percent of their honey bee colonies during the year spanning April 2014 to April 2015, according to the latest results of an annual nationwide survey. While winter loss rates improved slightly compared to last year, summer losses--and consequently, total annual losses--were more severe. Commercial beekeepers were hit particularly hard by the high rate of summer losses, which outstripped winter losses for the first time in five years, stoking concerns over the long-term trend of poor health in honey bee colonies. The ...

MANHASSET, NY -- The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, the research arm of the North Shore-LIJ Health System, and SetPoint Medical Inc., a biomedical technology company, today released the results of research on the therapeutic potential of vagus nerve stimulation. In a paper published by Bioelectronic Medicine, Kevin J. Tracey, MD, and his colleagues at the Feinstein Institute, explore how low-level electrical stimulation interacts with the body's nerves to reduce inflammation, a fundamental goal of bioelectronic medicine. Prior to this study, it was not understood ...

Scientists at The University of Manchester have made an important discovery about how certain cells stick to each other to form tissue. The team from the Faculty of Life Sciences studied how cells in the skin and heart are bound together through structures called desmosomes. They wanted to understand how these junctions between the cells in the tissue are so strong. Desmosomes are specialised for strong adhesion. They bind the tissue cells together to resist the rigours of everyday life and their failure can result in diseases of the skin and heart, including sudden ...

A part of the performance degradation mechanism of the advanced, electrodeless, helicon plasma thruster with a magnetic nozzle, has been revealed by the research group of Dr. Kazunori Takahashi and Prof. Akira Ando at Tohoku University's Department of Electrical Engineering. An electric propulsion device is a main engine, and a key piece of technology for space development and exploration. Charged particles are produced by electric discharge and accelerated, i.e. momentum is transferred to them via electromagnetic fields. The thrust force is equivalent to the momentum ...

Digital signatures are mechanisms for authenticating the validity or authorship of a certain digital message and they aim to be digital counterparts to real (or analog) signatures. The concept was introduced by Diffie and Hellman in 1976. Notice that, when certified, digital signatures have the same legal power as traditional signatures. With the advent of quantum computation new threats to security became a near future reality and all known digital signatures schemes are vulnerable, compromising fundamental properties of signature schemes: authenticity and authorship ...

Chicago (13 May, 2015)- In the latest issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, published by SAGE, experts from the United States, Russia, and China present global perspectives on ambitious nuclear modernization programs that the world's nuclear-armed countries have begun. In the latest edition of the Bulletin's Global Forum, Georgetown University professor Matthew Kroenig argues that: "Failure to modernize would not contribute to disarmament - but more than that, it would be irresponsible. A crippled US nuclear force would embolden enemies, frighten allies, generate ...

The recombination of electron shells in molecules, taking just a few dozen attoseconds (a billionth of a billionth of a second), can now be viewed "live," thanks to a new method developed by MIPT researchers and their colleagues from Denmark, Japan and Switzerland. An article detailing the results of their study has been published in the journal Nature Communications. In recent years, scientists have learned how to study ultrafast processes taking place at the atomic and molecular levels, and research in this field is expected to yield some very important results. In ...

This news release is available in German. Chloroplasts are the solar cells of plants and green algae. In a process called photosynthesis, light energy is used to produce biochemical energy and the oxygen we breathe. Thus, photosynthesis is one of the most important biological processes on the planet. A central part of photosynthesis takes place in a specialized structure within chloroplasts, the thylakoid membrane system. Despite its apparent important function, until now it was not clear how this specialized internal membrane system is actually formed. In a collaborative ...

Amsterdam, May 13, 2015 - A new family of molecules that kill cancer cells and protect healthy cells could be used to treat a number of different cancers, including cervical, breast, ovarian and lung cancers. Research published in EBioMedicine shows that as well as targeting and killing cancer cells, the molecules generate a protective effect against toxic chemicals in healthy cells. Cells can become cancerous when their DNA is damaged. Many different things can cause DNA damage, including smoking, chemicals and radiation; understanding exactly what happens at the point ...