November 11, 2014--In recent years, many lakes in the upper Midwest have been experiencing unprecedented algae blooms. These blooms threaten fish and affect recreational activities. A key culprit implicated in overgrowth of algae in lakes is phosphorus (P). Lake Pepin, located on the Minnesota/Wisconsin border, has seen increasing phosphorus concentrations over time. Researchers are now trying to identify upstream factors that could explain this increase. Satish Gupta, a University of Minnesota professor, and Ashley Grundtner, recently published a paper about their research ...

Washington, D.C.--A two-person team of Carnegie's Scott Sheppard and Chadwick Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory has discovered a new active asteroid, called 62412, in the Solar System's main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It is the first comet-like object seen in the Hygiea family of asteroids. Sheppard will present his team's findings at the American Astronomical Society's Division of Planetary Sciences meeting and participate on Tuesday, November 11, in a press conference organized by the society. Active asteroids are a newly recognized phenomenon. 62412 ...

How close you are to fast-food outlets may be linked to your risk of Type-2 diabetes and obesity a new study led by the University of Leicester has discovered. The research found that there was a higher number of fast-food outlets within 500 metres of inner-city neighbourhoods described as non-white as well as in socially deprived areas. The researchers warn that their findings, based on a study of over 10,000 people, have important implications for diabetes prevention and for those granting planning permission for fast-food outlets. "Our study suggests that for every ...

Like a skin, the sea-surface microlayer separates the ocean from the atmosphere. The exchange of gases and the emission of sea-spray aerosols - two functions that are crucial for climate - take place in this boundary film. A mesocosm experiment by scientists from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research Bremerhaven (AWI) and the Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde (IOW) reveals for the first time how ocean change might affect the special physical, chemical and biological characteristics ...

Using community pharmacies to identify undiagnosed cases of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) at an early stage could save £264 million a year according to new research from the University of East Anglia (UEA). A report published today shows the value of pharmacies in addressing diseases at an early stage. It reveals that case-finding would provide "significant NHS and societal benefits" and save the NHS more money than the service costs to deliver. The research shows that more than half (57 per cent) of people screened by pharmacies were identified ...

A tool to help multinational companies assess the business bribery risks faced when conducting business in foreign countries and tailor compliance policies to address those threats has been created by researchers from the RAND Corporation and TRACE International. Called the TRACE Matrix, the tool improves upon previous methods of risk assessment by incorporating approaches that are better designed to help businesses predict bribery risk and similar threats, researchers say. The tool is free and is available on the TRACE International website. Researchers say corruption ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (Monday, November 10, 2014)--After menopause and before age 65, women who have normal bone density have a very low risk of fracture, shows a new study from the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) published online in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society. That means these women don't need another bone mass density (BMD) test before age 65. This study followed up 4,068 postmenopausal women ages 50 to 64 who had a BMD test, weren't taking hormones or calcium and vitamin D supplements in the trial, and didn't already have an osteoporotic ...

Research during the past 30 years has found many benefits of skin-to-skin contact between mothers and newborns immediately after birth, particularly with aiding breastfeeding. However, in some hospitals, skin-to-skin contact following cesarean birth is not implemented, due to practices around the surgery. A recent Quality Improvement (QI) project demonstrated that women's birth experiences were improved by implementing skin-to-skin contact after cesarean surgery. Women who give birth by cesarean often have more difficulty with breastfeeding, and skin-to-skin contact can ...

Consumers place great faith in weight loss pills and remedies, buying and using them more than ever before. American obesity rates, however, are skyrocketing. According to a new study in the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, false beliefs about these drugs are causing Americans to gain more weight. "Weight management remedies that promise to reduce the risks of being overweight may undermine consumer motivation to engage in health-supportive behaviors," write authors Lisa E. Bolton (Pennsylvania State University), Amit Bhattacharjee (Dartmouth College) and Americus ...

Why do some chemical farmers resist a profitable conversion to organic methods? A new study in the Journal of Marketing suggests it may be because making that change feels like switching belief systems. "The ideological map of American agriculture reveals an unfolding drama between chemical and organic farming," write authors Melea Press (University of Bath), Eric Arnould (Southern Denmark University), Jeff Murray (University of Arkansas) and Katherine Strand (McGill University). "Chemical farmers argue that to make money, one must follow chemical traditions; when organic ...

As obesity rates rise, health professionals and policy makers scramble to help consumers resist unhealthy eating choices, often focusing on better labeling and improved nutritional knowledge. According to a new study in the Journal of Marketing Research, however, training people to pay attention to their emotions is a far more powerful strategy. "Consumers are often mindless," write authors Blair Kidwell (Ohio State University), Jonathan Hasford (Florida International University) and David M. Hardesty (University of Kentucky). "We not only demonstrate that emotional ...

The American obesity epidemic is out of control, and health advocates are working hard to ensure that food labels clearly list calorie content and all unhealthy ingredients. But according to a new study in the Journal of Marketing Research, labeling alone contributes little to healthier eating decisions unless the item also costs more. "Obesity rates have more than doubled in the past two decades, and large-scale interventions are necessary to dissuade people from consuming unhealthy food," write authors Avni M. Shah (Duke University), James R. Bettman (Duke University), ...

Cities around the world are pouring money into beautiful bicycle paths in hopes of convincing citizens to drive less and bike more. According to a new study in the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, however, getting people to go from four to two wheels isn't quite that simple. "Although bicycling is a widely accepted way to travel around cities in Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands," write authors Marius C. Claudy (University College, Dublin) and Mark Peterson (University of Wyoming), "it is still the most underutilized form of transportation in countries such as ...

Reserve's borders have erroneously moved 50 kilometers New species, named after the Luama Katanga Reserve, is now threatened by cattle ranches and forest destruction NEW YORK (November 11, 2014) - WCS scientists in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have discovered a new species of plant living in a remote rift valley escarpment that's supposed to be inside of a protected area. But an administrative mapping error puts the reserve's borders some 50 kilometers west of the actual location. Now the new species, along with 900 other plant varieties and 1,400 chimpanzees, ...

For their study, the researchers were able to fall back on uninterrupted long-term temperature measurements of groundwater flows around the cities of Cologne and Karlsruhe, where the operators of the local waterworks have been measuring the temperature of the groundwater, which is largely uninfluenced by humans, for forty years. This is unique and a rare commodity for the researchers. "For us, the data was a godsend," stresses Peter Bayer, a senior assistant at ETH Zurich's Geological Institute. Even with some intensive research, they would not have been able to find a ...

Many businesses now offer customers the opportunity to make charitable donations to good causes along with their purchases, but does this really encourage the customer to buy more? According to a new study in the Journal of Marketing, the answer is a firm "Yes." "The mere presence of a charitable donation opportunity can generate significantly more sales," write authors Michelle Andrews (Temple University), Xueming Luo (Temple University), Zheng Fang (Sichuan University) and Jaakko Aspara (Hanken Swedish School of Economics). "Offering the donation nearly doubled the ...

When consumers see a company performing good deeds, they often assume that the company's products are healthy. According to a new study in the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing this may be far from true, and the company's socially responsible behavior may be creating a "health halo" over unhealthy foods. "Research demonstrates that consumers frequently engage in inference making when evaluating food products. These inferences can be highly inaccurate, leading to unintended, unhealthy consumer choices," write authors John Peloza (University of Kentucky), Christine Ye ...

A novel method of altering a protein in milk to bind with an antiretroviral drug promises to greatly improve treatment for infants and young children suffering from HIV/AIDS, according to a researcher in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences. That's critical because an estimated 3.4 million children are living with HIV/AIDS, the World Health Organization reports, and nine out of 10 of them live in resource-limited countries in sub-Saharan Africa, where effective antiretroviral treatments still are not widely accessible or available. International medical experts ...

Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) bacteria are responsible each year for around 400 million cases of diarrhoea and 400,000 deaths in the world's low- and middle-income countries. Children under the age of five are most affected. ETEC bacteria also cause diarrhoea in nearly one in two travellers to these areas. Major breakthrough Researchers at the University of Gothenburg's Sahlgrenska Academy are world leaders in research into ETEC and have now made a major breakthrough in collaboration with colleagues from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the UK, Karolinska ...

As football players are learning, a violent blow to the head has the potential to cause mild to severe traumatic brain injury -- physical damage to the brain that can be debilitating, even fatal. The long-term effects run the gamut of human functioning, from trouble communicating to extensive cognitive and behavioral deterioration. To date, there is no effective medical or cognitive treatment for patients with traumatic brain injuries. But a new study from Tel Aviv University researchers points to an "enriched environment" -- specially enhanced surroundings -- as a promising ...

Technology developed at the University of Sussex helps hospitals make earlier and more accurate treatment decisions and survival assessments for patients with bowel cancer. Bowel cancer kills more than 16,000 people a year in the UK, making it the nation's second-most common cause of cancer death (after lung cancer). A novel medical-imaging technology, TexRAD, which analyses the texture of tumours, has been shown in trials to enable early diagnosis of those bowel-cancer patients not responding to the standard cancer therapy better than other available tumour markers. ...

Changes to China's drink driving laws are catching the community off guard with more than 70 per cent of people unaware of the blood alcohol limits that could see them face criminal charges, according to new Queensland University of Technology (QUT) research conducted in two Chinese cities. QUT's Centre for Accident Research & Road Safety - Queensland (CARRS-Q) has partnered with organisations in China to promote road safety and reduce fatalities and injuries, as alcohol-related driving offences are being brought into sharper focus because of the country's rapid motorisation ...

A new climate change modeling tool developed by scientists at Indiana University, Princeton University and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration finds that carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere owing to greater plant growth from rising CO2 levels will be partially offset by changes in the activity of soil microbes that derive their energy from plant root growth. Soils hold more carbon than all of the earth's plant biomass and atmosphere combined. The new work published by Benjamin N. Sulman, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of co-author and ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- A new treatment regimen for hepatitis C, the most common cause of liver cancer and transplantation, has produced results that will transform treatment protocols for transplant patients, according to research published online today in the New England Journal of Medicine. The investigational three-drug regimen, which produced hepatitis C cure rates of 97 percent, is an oral interferon-free therapy. Previously, the typical treatment for hepatitis C after a liver transplant was an interferon-based therapy, usually given for 48 weeks. It had a much lower response ...

Lead researcher, Dr Sarah Dunstan from the Nossal Institute of Global Health at the University of Melbourne said the study is the first large-scale, unbiased search for human genes that affect a person's risk of typhoid. Enteric fever, or typhoid fever as it more commonly known, is a considerable health burden to lower-income countries. This finding is important because this natural resistance represents one of the largest human gene effects on an infectious disease. "We screened the human genome to look for genes associated with susceptibility to, or resistance ...