Location-based advertisements may pinpoint customers geographically, but often miss the target because customers may find the ads creepy and intrusive, according to an international team of researchers. To overcome this negativity, the researchers suggest advertisers invite their customers to help tailor ads they might receive. While being physically close to a product or shop improved attitudes about local advertisements on their mobile devices, customers felt significantly better about both the advertisement and location-based advertising when they had a hand in selecting ...

Emergency room physicians treating patients with alcohol-related trauma can better identify those at risk of future drinking-related trauma with a 10-point questionnaire rather than the standard blood alcohol content test, according to a study in The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association (JAOA). The questionnaire, known as the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), was developed by the World Health Organization to address difficulties in identifying at-risk drinking behavior. It assesses alcohol consumption, drinking behaviors and alcohol-related ...

The original Americans came from Siberia in a single wave no more than 23,000 years ago, at the height of the last Ice Age, and apparently hung out in the north - perhaps for thousands of years - before spreading in two distinct populations throughout North and South America, according to a new genomic analysis. The findings, which will be reported in the July 24 issue of Science, confirm the most popular theory of the peopling of the Americas, but throws cold water on others, including the notion of an earlier wave of people from East Asia prior to the last glacial maximum, ...

Starting antiretroviral therapy early not only prevents serious AIDS-related diseases, but also prevents the onset of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other non-AIDS-related diseases in HIV-infected people, according to a new analysis of data from the Strategic Timing of AntiRetroviral Treatment (START) study, the first large-scale randomized clinical trial to establish that earlier antiretroviral treatment benefits all HIV-infected individuals. Rates of both serious AIDS-related events and serious non-AIDS-related events were significantly reduced with early therapy. The ...

The Institute of Medicine has identified interprofessional education (IPE) as a key innovation for achieving the triple aim of better care, better outcomes and reduced health care costs. Yet, a shortage of qualified faculty and difficulty with aligning learners' schedules often prevent sustainable and scalable IPE. Now, a team of New York University researchers from both the College of Nursing (CoN) and NYU School of Medicine (SoM), are addressing the barriers to wide-spread adoption of IPE. Led by Maja Djukic, PhD, RN, assistant professor at the CoN, and Marc Triola, ...

The United States now produces about as much crude oil as Saudi Arabia does, and enough natural gas to export in large quantities. That's thanks to hydraulic fracturing, a mining practice that involves a rock-cracking pressurized mix of water, sand and chemicals. Ongoing research by Stanford environmental scientist Rob Jackson attempts to minimize the risks of "fracking" to underground drinking water sources. The most recent such study, published in Environmental Science & Technology, finds that at least 6,900 oil and gas wells in the U.S. were fracked less than a mile ...

MADISON, Wis. -- Cognitive scientists have come to view the brain as a prediction machine, constantly comparing what is happening around us to expectations based on experience -- and considering what should happen next. "These predictions, most of them unconscious, include predicting what we're about to see," says Gary Lupyan, a University of Wisconsin-Madison psychology professor. Work in Lupyan's lab has demonstrated the predictive process through manipulating the connection between language and vision in the brain. A study published recently in The Journal of Neuroscience ...

MIAMI - Researchers discovered a threatened coral species that lives in deeper waters off the U.S. Virgin Islands is more fertile than its shallow-water counterparts. The new study showed that mountainous star corals (Orbicella faveolata) located at nearly 140 feet (43 meters) deep may produce one trillion more eggs per square kilometer (247 acres) than those on shallow reefs. The findings from scientists at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and the University of the Virgin Islands have important implications for the future ...

ATLANTA - July 21, 2015-If Louisiana, which has some of the highest colon cancer incidence and mortality rates in the nation, had the same risk factors, screening uptake, and survival rates as New Jersey, incidence and mortality from the disease would not only drop, they would drop to levels below that of New Jersey, according to a new study. The study, appearing in Cancer, shows that removing differences in health behavior and survival would close a gap that has appeared over the past several decades. Decades ago, colorectal cancer incidence and mortality rates were ...

New research provides mathematical evidence that Michelangelo used the Golden Ratio of 1.6 when painting The Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The Golden Ratio is found when you divide a line into two parts so that the longer part divided by the smaller part is equal to the whole length divided by the longer part. The Golden Ratio has been linked with greater structural efficiency and has puzzled scientists for centuries due to its frequent occurrence in nature--for example in snail shells and flower petals. The Golden Ratio can also be found in a ...

Sudden cardiac arrest kills an estimated 200,000 people a year in the United States, but many of those lives could be saved if ordinary bystanders simply performed CPR, a new study led by Duke Medicine shows. The early application of cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) by an average person nearby, combined with defibrillation by firefighters or police before the arrival of emergency medical services (EMS), was the one intervention that substantially increased survival from cardiac arrest, according to findings reported by Duke researchers and colleagues in the July 21 ...

Two studies in the July 21 issue of JAMA find that use of interventions such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation and automated external defibrillators by bystanders and first responders have increased and were associated with improved survival and neurological outcomes for persons who experienced an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is an increasing health concern worldwide, with poor prognoses. Shinji Nakahara, M.D., Ph.D., of the Kanagawa University of Human Services, Yokosuka, Japan, and colleagues examined the associations between ...

Although some previous studies have suggested an increased risk of bladder cancer with use of the diabetes drug pioglitazone, analyses that included nearly 200,000 patients found no statistically significant increased risk, however a small increased risk could not be excluded, according to a study in the July 21 issue of JAMA. Additional analyses with another large group found that use of pioglitazone was associated with an increase in the risk of prostate and pancreatic cancer, although further investigation is needed to assess whether the associations are causal or due ...

In a phase 2 trial that included nearly 1,000 adults, the AS03 and MF59 adjuvants (a component that improves immune response of inactivated influenza vaccines) increased the immune responses to two doses of an inactivated H7N9 influenza vaccine, with AS03-adjuvanted formulations inducing the highest amount of antibody response, according to a study in the July 21 issue of JAMA. In March 2013 the first human infections with the avian influenza A(H7N9) virus were reported in China, and since that time hundreds of cases have been documented. While most infections are believed ...

Researchers have found an association between treatment with the antibiotic dicloxacillin and a decrease in international normalized ratio (INR; a measure of blood coagulation) levels among patients taking the vitamin K antagonists warfarin or phenprocoumon, according to a study in the July 21 issue of JAMA. A challenge in the use of vitamin K antagonists (VKAs) is the potential for drug-drug interactions, resulting in insufficient or excessive anticoagulation. Solid data are lacking for most alleged interactions. In case reports, the commonly used antibiotic dicloxacillin ...

WASHINGTON, DC, July 21, 2015 - It's not unusual for two drivers to depart from the same location, head out to the same destination, drive more or less the same speed and nevertheless arrive at dramatically different times, with one driver taking significantly longer to arrive. While this can simply be bad luck, sometimes the reason isn't an obvious external event. And if you are a world traveler, you've likely noticed the fact that transportation works like a charm in some countries, in the sense that you can plan your commute or trip via public bus with confidence. ...

The negative health effects of international air travel are well documented but now it seems that the common elderberry can provide some relief. Associate Professor Evelin Tiralongo and Dr Shirley Wee from Griffith's Menzies Health Institute Queensland (MHIQ) have completed a clinical trial showing that an elderberry supplement can provide some protection from cold and flu-like symptoms following long-haul flights. Intercontinental air travel can be stressful and affect a passenger's physical and psychological wellbeing. Whilst jet lag and fatigue remain the best known ...

WASHINGTON --Tamsulosin works no better than placebo on small kidney stones, but does improve passage of more large kidney stones than placebo does. The results of this large clinical trial evaluating tamsulosin versus placebo were published online Friday in Annals of Emergency Medicine ("Distal Ureteric Stones and Tamsulosin: A Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Randomized, Multi-Center Trial (The DUST Trial)"). "Kidney stones bring more than a million Americans a year to emergency departments because they are excruciatingly painful," said lead study author Jeremy Furyk, ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio--Gravity data captured by satellite has allowed researchers to take a closer look at the geology deep beneath the Tibetan Plateau. The analysis, published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, offers some of the clearest views ever obtained of rock moving up to 50 miles below the plateau, in the lowest layer of Earth's crust. There, the Indian tectonic plate presses continually northward into the Eurasian tectonic plate, giving rise to the highest mountains on Earth--and deadly earthquakes, such as the one that killed more than 9,000 people in Nepal ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- A microbe found in caves produces a compound that inhibits Pseudogymnoascus destructans, the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome in bats, researchers report in the journal Mycopathologia. The finding could lead to treatments that kill the fungus while minimizing disruption to cave ecosystems, the researchers say. The yeast Candida albicans produces the compound: trans, trans-farnesol. Candida species are already present in caves where bats hibernate and have been isolated from the bodies of healthy, hibernating bats, said University of Illinois ...

A clinical study funded by the National Institutes of Health has found that young, single black women in South Africa adhered to a daily pill regimen to prevent HIV infection--an HIV prevention strategy known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP. This finding is the first strong indication that this population at substantial HIV risk could accept and reliably adhere to daily PrEP dosing. Men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender women (TGW) in New York and Thailand also successfully adhered to daily dosing. PrEP--which consists of a daily dose of two antiretrovirals, ...

Dr. Michele Rodda describes two new tropical plants species from the Hoya genus, found on the world's third largest island Borneo. The genus is one of the largest and most complex plant groups in Asia. The first to be described in the paper, H. ruthiae, is characterised with its lack of coloured milk-like sap typical for most of the Hoya species, and H. bakoensis - with its strict preference for growing epiphytically (without causing any harm to its host) and rooting inside ant nests. The study is published in the open-access journal PhytoKeys. Collected by Ruth Kiew ...

URBANA, Ill. - Controlled burning is widely used to maintain biodiversity and enhance regeneration of important deciduous tree species such as oak and hickory, but a recent University of Illinois study found that this practice also increases the growth of an aggressive species of invasive grass. Microstegium vimineum (also called Japanese stiltgrass or Nepalese browntop) is an abundant non-native grass in southern Illinois where the study was conducted. "We found that fire promotes the recruitment and growth of M. vimineum, particularly under moist soil conditions," ...

Although much progress has been made in combating the global HIV/AIDS pandemic, to halt new infections and end the pandemic, a combination of non-vaccine and vaccine prevention modalities will be needed. Even with these tools, significant implementation gaps must be closed, including the targeted deployment of proven prevention methods to the populations that need them most, says Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Fauci addressed a special session at the 8th International ...

Irvine, Calif., July 21, 2015 - The 11 percent decrease in climate change-causing carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. between 2007 and 2013 was caused by the global financial recession - not the reduced use of coal, research from the University of California Irvine, the University of Maryland, and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis shows. Experts have assumed that the drop in emissions reflected a shift toward natural gas, which produces roughly half as much carbon dioxide per unit of energy as coal and was made cheap by the hydraulic fracturing ...