EAST LANSING, Mich. --- The sexes show stark differences in how they evaluate art, finds a new study co-authored by a Michigan State University marketing scholar. Men seem to focus more on the artist's background and authenticity, while women pay more attention to the art itself. The study, which appears in the journal Psychology & Marketing, is the first to investigate how important an artist's "brand" is to average consumers when they appraise art. Turns out, that personal brand is very important, a finding that has implications for the $64 billion art market and ...

This news release is available in German. It has been known for several years that sulfuric acid contributes to the formation of tiny aerosol particles, which play an important role in the formation of clouds. The new study by Kürten et al. shows that dimethylamine can tremendously enhance new particle formation. The formation of neutral (i.e. uncharged) nucleating clusters of sulfuric acid and dimethylamine was observed for the first time. Previously, it was only possible to detect neutral clusters containing up to two sulfuric acid molecules. However, ...

New Rochelle, NY, October 9, 2014—Laser Solid Forming (LSF) is an innovative method for direct fabrication of metallic components in additive manufacturing. Renowned researchers Weidong Huang and Lin Xin, from China's Northwestern Polytechnical University, Shaanxi, describe their progress and applications with LSF technology and the excellent mechanical properties of the metallic parts produced in a Review article in 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the 3D Printing ...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 9, 2014—Some people might consider mucus an icky bodily secretion best left wrapped in a tissue, but to a group of researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, snot is an endlessly fascinating subject. The team has developed a way to use gold nanoparticles and light to measure the stickiness of the slimy substance that lines our airways. The new method could help doctors better monitor and treat lung diseases such as cystic fibrosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The research team will present their work at The ...

Researchers from the National Cancer Institute report that decaffeinated coffee drinking may benefit liver health. Results of the study published in Hepatology, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, show that higher coffee consumption, regardless of caffeine content, was linked to lower levels of abnormal liver enzymes. This suggests that chemical compounds in coffee other than caffeine may help protect the liver. Coffee consumption is highly prevalent with more than half of all Americans over 18 drinking on average three cups each day ...

VIDEO: The 'heart attack in a dish' experiment reveals that the mitochondria--or cellular powerhouses--of heart muscle cells flicker and oscillate following heart attack and disrupt the heart's entire electrical system... Click here for more information. Heart attack survivors often experience dangerous heart rhythm disturbances during treatment designed to restore blood flow to the injured heart muscle, a common and confounding complication of an otherwise lifesaving intervention. ...

This news release is available in German. The Ebola epidemic in West Africa appears to be spiralling out of control. More than ever, local and global health authorities want to know how the epidemic will develop and, above all, how to prevent it from spreading further. Certain parameters help them to determine this, such as the reproductive number, which is the average number of infections caused by a single infected individual. The incubation and infectious periods are also highly relevant; i.e. the time from infection to the onset of symptoms and the time from onset ...

Antimicrobial usage in animals in Denmark continued to increase in 2013 – mainly due to an increased use in pigs. However, antimicrobial use in pigs is still 12% lower than in 2009. In general, livestock received very little of the critically important antimicrobials, which are used to treat humans. These findings appear in the annual DANMAP report from Statens Serum Institut and the National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark. DANMAP is the Danish integrated antimicrobial resistance monitoring and research programme. In 2013, the total use of antimicrobials ...

This news release is available in German. Only recently, the UN Climate Summit came together in New York to further address the necessary measures to protect the Earth from a dramatic climate change. It has long been recognised that an increase of the average temperature will cause rising oceans and thus flooded landscapes. Particularly, regions close to the coasts are endangered. While it is well known that climate change has increased average temperatures, it is less clear how temperature variability has altered with climate change. Postdoctoral fellow George Wang, ...

The risk of having another stroke is higher if patients, after dilation of their blood vessels in the brain, not only receive clot-inhibiting drugs, but also have small tubes called stents inserted. However, studies have provided no hint of a benefit from stenting, which is also referred to with the abbreviation "PTAS". This is the conclusion reached in the rapid report of the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG), as published on 9 October 2014. Stents are supposed to prevent restenosis Blood vessels in the brain that are narrowed or blocked ...

Scientists at the University of Southampton have identified key characteristics that enhance a nanoparticle's ability to penetrate skin, in a milestone study which could have major implications for the delivery of drugs. Nanoparticles are up to 100,000 times smaller than the thickness of a human hair and drugs delivered using them as a platform, can be more concentrated, targeted and efficient than those delivered through traditional means. Although previous studies have shown that nanoparticles interact with the skin, conditions in these experiments have not been sufficiently ...

Conventional estimates for the collapse of the Aegean civilization may be incorrect by up to a century, according to new radiocarbon analyses. While historical chronologies traditionally place the end of the Greek Bronze Age at around 1025 BCE, this latest research suggests a date 70 to 100 years earlier. Archaeologists from the University of Birmingham selected 60 samples of animal bones, plant remains and building timbers, excavated at Assiros in northern Greece, to be radiocarbon dated and correlated with 95.4% accuracy using Bayesian statistical methodology at the ...

VIDEO: Learn more about our research into the coast and how it can boost health and wellbeing. Click here for more information. People who live close to the coast are more likely to meet physical activity guidelines than inland dwellers, finds a new study released today. The research involved participants from across England and describes a particularly noticeable effect on western – but unexpectedly not eastern – coasts of the nation. Publishing their findings ...

Scientists at The University of Manchester have used a new way of working to identify a new gene linked to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's. The discovery fills in another piece of the jigsaw when it comes to identifying people most at risk of developing the condition. Researcher David Ashbrook and colleagues from the UK and USA used two of the world's largest collections of scientific data to compare the genes in mice and humans. Using brain scans from the ENIGMA Consortium and genetic information from The Mouse Brain Library, he was able to identify a ...

A new measurement of dark matter in the Milky Way has revealed there is half as much of the mysterious substance as previously thought. Australian astronomers used a method developed almost 100 years ago to discover that the weight of dark matter in our own galaxy is 800 000 000 000 (or 8 x 1011) times the mass of the Sun. They probed the edge of the Milky Way, looking closely, for the first time, at the fringes of the galaxy about 5 million billion kilometres from Earth. Astrophysicist Dr Prajwal Kafle, from The University of Western Australia node of the International ...

PITTSBURGH, Oct. 9, 2014 – National guidelines for the cleaning of certain gastrointestinal (GI) scopes are likely to be updated due to findings from UPMC's infection prevention team. The research and updated disinfection technique will be shared Saturday in Philadelphia at ID Week 2014, an annual meeting of health professionals in infectious disease fields. "Patient safety is our top priority," said senior author Carlene Muto, M.D., M.S., director of infection prevention at UPMC Presbyterian Hospital. "We are confident that the change from disinfection to sterilization ...

PITTSBURGH, Oct. 9, 2014 – UPMC Presbyterian Hospital's infection prevention teams have improved hand washing and sanitizing compliance at the hospital to nearly 100 percent among clinical staff through accountability and educational measures. In a separate effort at UPMC Mercy Hospital, rates of a deadly infection were reduced by educating patients about hand hygiene. The successful techniques will be reported Saturday in presentations in Philadelphia at ID Week 2014, an annual meeting of health professionals in infectious disease fields. "Hand hygiene compliance ...

No matter what type of chemotherapy you attack a tumor with, many cancer cells resort to the same survival tactic: They start eating themselves. Scientists at Brigham Young University discovered the two proteins that pair up and switch on this process – known as autophagy. "This gives us a therapeutic avenue to target autophagy in tumors," said Josh Andersen, a BYU chemistry professor. "The idea would be to make tumors more chemo-sensitive. You could target these proteins and the mechanism of this switch to block autophagy, which would allow for lower doses of ...

The evolution of new traits with novel functions has always posed a challenge to evolutionary biology. Studying the color markings of cichlid fish, Swiss scientists were now able to show what triggered these evolutionary innovations, namely: a mobile genetic element in the regulatory region of a color gene. Their results have been published in the latest issue of the renowned scientific journal Nature Communications. Biological evolution is in general based on the progressive adaption of traits through natural or sexual selection. However, ever so often, complex traits ...

Ebola, as with many emerging infections, is likely to have arisen due to man's interaction with wild animals – most likely the practice of hunting and eating wild meat known as 'bushmeat'. A team of researchers led by the University of Cambridge and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) has surveyed almost six hundred people across southern Ghana to find out what drives consumption of bat bushmeat – and how people perceive the risks associated with the practice. The Straw-Coloured Fruit Bat, Eidolon helvum, is widely hunted and eaten in Ghana, but carries ...

Carbon capture is a process by which waste carbon dioxide (CO2) released by factories and power plants is collected and stored away, in order to reduce global carbon emissions. There are two major ways of carbon capture today, one using powder-like solid materials which "stick" to CO2, and one using liquids that absorb it. Despite their potential environmental and energy benefits, current carbon capture strategies are prohibitive because of engineering demands, cost and overall energy-efficiency. Collaborating scientists from EPFL, UC Berkley and Beijing have combined carbon-capturing ...

Jülich, Germany, 9 October 2014 – When a basically sturdy material becomes soft and spongy, one usually suspects that it has been damaged in some way. But this is not always the case, especially when it comes to complex fluids and biological cells. By looking at the microscopic building blocks – known as "filaments" – of biopolymer networks, researchers from Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany and the FOM Institute AMOLF in the Netherlands, revealed that such materials soften by undergoing a transition from an entangled spaghetti of filaments to ...

Some 340 European scientists, policy-makers and other experts representing 143 organizations from 31 countries spoke with one voice today, publishing a common vision of today's most pressing marine-related health and economic threats and opportunities. In a declaration concluding a three day meeting in Rome, EurOcean 2014 participants also released an agreed, five-year roadmap to achieve expanded, more integrated and effective policy-oriented ocean scrutiny. EurOcean 2014 was convened by the Italian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the European Marine ...

Nyon, Switzerland (October 9, 2014) – Alarming new data published today by the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF), shows that one-third of all hip fractures worldwide occur in men, with mortality rates as high as 37% in the first year following fracture. This makes men twice as likely as women to die after a hip fracture. Osteoporosis experts warn that as men often remain undiagnosed and untreated, millions are left vulnerable to early death and disability, irrespective of fracture type. The report entitled 'Osteoporosis in men: why change needs to happen' ...

(PHILADELPHIA) -- The genetic fingerprint of a metastatic cancer is constantly changing, which means that the therapy that may have stopped a patient's cancer growth today, won't necessarily work tomorrow. Although doctors can continue to biopsy the cancer during the course of the treatment and send samples for genomic analysis, not all patients can receive repeat biopsies. Taking biopsies from metastatic cancer patients is an invasive procedure that it is frequently impossible due to the lack of accessible lesions. Research published October 10th in the journal Breast ...