When it comes to managing boundaries between work responsibilities and home life, technology is our "frenemy." Technology, specifically mobile technology, can be alternately used to maintain, erase or manage home and work boundaries along a spectrum. That's according to ongoing research by the University of Cincinnati to be presented June 17 at the Work and Family Researchers Network Conference in New York City by Stacie Furst-Holloway, UC associate professor of psychology. Co-authors with Furst-Holloway on the research are Elaine Hollensbee, associate professor of ...

KNOXVILLE—Researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, are a step closer to creating a prophylactic drug that would neutralize the deadly effects of the chemical weapons used in Syria and elsewhere. Jeremy Smith, UT-ORNL Governor's Chair and an expert in computational biology, is part of the team that is trying to engineer enzymes—called bioscavengers—so they work more efficiently against chemical weapons. The work is a joint effort between scientists at UT, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and a French national laboratory in Grenoble. Their study was published ...

A new study out of the University of Connecticut demonstrates for the first time how some plants travel not just across the backyard, but as far as from Northern to Southern hemispheres on the wings of migratory birds. The findings, published in the online journal PeerJ, offer critical insight into the ecology and evolution of plants that are represented across both continents of the Americas. The study found 23 regenerative plant diaspores – plant seeds or spores – trapped in the feathers of migratory birds leaving the Arctic harbor for South America. Although wind ...

At a time when obesity, type 2 diabetes, and their complications are a veritable epidemic worldwide, researchers at the University of Montreal and CHUM Research Centre (CRCHUM) recently demonstrated the potential of retinoic acid (RA), a derivative of Vitamin A, in treating obesity and type 2 diabetes and preventing their cardiovascular complications. The findings were presented June 6, 2014 at the Annual Conference of the Canadian Nutrition Society in Saint John's, Newfoundland. "In obese and insulin resistant mice, retinoic acid reduces the risk of cardiac apoptosis, ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Nanopores may one day lead a revolution in DNA sequencing. By sliding DNA molecules one at a time through tiny holes in a thin membrane, it may be possible to decode long stretches of DNA at lightning speeds. Scientists, however, haven't quite figured out the physics of how polymer strands like DNA interact with nanopores. Now, with the help of a particular type of virus, researchers from Brown University have shed new light on this nanoscale physics. "What got us interested in this was that everybody in the field studied DNA and ...

The results from the initial clinical studies involving the microwave helmet Strokefinder confirm the usefulness of microwaves for rapid and accurate diagnosis of stroke patients. This is shown in a scientific article being published on June 16. Strokefinder enables earlier diagnosis than current methods, which improves the possibility to counteract brain damage. In the article, researchers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sahlgrenska Academy and Sahlgrenska University Hospital present results from the initial patient studies completed last year. The study included ...

A London School of Economics researcher examining the public and private dangers of drugs argues against demonizing e-cigarettes in a presentation being given at a conference of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). He also calls on public officials to recognize that alcohol causes greater harm than other recreational drugs and more public attention should be paid to controlling its harmful effects. Lawrence D. Phillips, an emeritus professor at the London School of Economics, will present his research group's findings about the relative ...

Waiting until marriage to have babies is now "unusual" among less-educated adults close to 30 years old, Johns Hopkins University researchers found. "Clearly the role of marriage in fertility and family formation is now modest in early adulthood and the lofty place that marriage once held among the markers of adulthood is in serious question," sociologist Andrew J. Cherlin said. "It is now unusual for non-college graduates who have children in their teens and 20s to have all of them within marriage." Among parents aged 26 to 31 who didn't graduate from college, 74 ...

Doctors and scientists have for years been astonished to observe patients with kidney disease experiencing renal regeneration. The kidney, unlike its neighbor the liver, was universally understood to be a static organ once it had fully developed. Now a new study conducted by researchers at Sheba Medical Center, Tel Aviv University and Stanford University turns that theory on its head by pinpointing the precise cellular signalling responsible for renal regeneration and exposing the multi-layered nature of kidney growth. The research, in Cell Reports, was conducted by principal ...

PULLMAN, Wash.–Washington State University researchers have developed the first fuel cell that can directly convert fuels, such as jet fuel or gasoline, to electricity, providing a dramatically more energy-efficient way to create electric power for planes or cars. Led by Professors Su Ha and M. Grant Norton in the Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture, the researchers have published the results of their work in the May edition of Energy Technology. A second paper on using their fuel cell with gasoline has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Power ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- (June 16, 2014) -- Maybe turning to sleep gadgets -- wristbands, sound therapy and sleep-monitoring smartphone apps -- is a good idea. A new University of Oregon-led study of middle-aged or older people who get six to nine hours of sleep a night think better than those sleeping fewer or more hours. The study, published in the June issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, reaffirms numerous small-scale studies in the United States, Western Europe and Japan, but it does so using data compiled across six middle-income nations and involving more than ...

Cambridge, Mass. – June 16, 2014 – A team of researchers led by David J. Mooney, Robert P. Pinkas Family Professor of Bioengineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, have identified a possible mechanism by which normal cells turn malignant in mammary epithelial tissues, the tissues frequently involved in breast cancer. Dense mammary tissue has long been recognized as a strong indicator of risk for breast cancer. This is why regular breast examinations are considered essential to early detection. Until now, however, the significance of that tissue ...

Your eye could someday house its own high-tech information center, tracking important changes and letting you know when it's time to see an eye doctor. University of Washington engineers have designed a low-power sensor that could be placed permanently in a person's eye to track hard-to-measure changes in eye pressure. The sensor would be embedded with an artificial lens during cataract surgery and would detect pressure changes instantaneously, then transmit the data wirelessly using radio frequency waves. The researchers recently published their results in the Journal ...

LIVERMORE, Calif. – Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers have developed a new and more efficient approach to a challenging problem in additive manufacturing -- using selective laser melting, namely, the selection of appropriate process parameters that result in parts with desired properties. Selective laser melting (SLM) is a powder-based, additive manufacturing process where a 3D part is produced, layer by layer, using a high-energy laser beam to fuse the metal powder particles. Some SLM applications require parts that are very dense, with less than ...

Scientists in the University of Connecticut's Technology Incubation Program have identified a novel approach to treating multiple sclerosis (MS) using human embryonic stem cells, offering a promising new therapy for more than 2.3 million people suffering from the debilitating disease. The researchers demonstrated that the embryonic stem cell therapy significantly reduced MS disease severity in animal models and offered better treatment results than stem cells derived from human adult bone marrow. The study was led by ImStem Biotechnology Inc. of Farmington, Conn., ...

The Antarctic shore is a place of huge contrasts, as quiet, dark, and frozen winters give way to bright, clear waters, thick with algae and peppered with drifting icebergs in summer. But as the planet has warmed in the last two decades, massive losses of sea ice in winter have left icebergs free to roam for most of the year. As a result, say researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on June 16, boulders on the shallow seabed—once encrusted with a rich assemblage of species in intense competition for limited space—now mostly support a single species. ...

The first Canadian guideline for Bell palsy, facial weakness or paralysis caused by facial nerve damage, is aimed at helping physicians manage and treat patients during the acute phase as well as recovery. The guideline, published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal), is based on the growing body of recent evidence on the condition. Bell palsy is damage to the facial nerve that results in sudden weakness or paralysis of one side of the face. It can come on suddenly with symptoms such as drooping of the face and eyelids, twitching, and others that may include ...

Just as electronic circuits work with electrical charges, optical circuits process pulses of light, which gives them a distinct advantage in terms of speed. Optical technologies are therefore the object of intense research, aiming to develop novel optical devices that can control the flow of light at the nanometer scale. EPFL scientists have developed a new method that can optimally design a widely-used class of optical devices with unprecedented effectiveness. Their designs have been fabricated in the US, at the University of Rochester, and successfully tested in Italy, ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. — Scientists have confirmed the function of a gene that controls the awakening of trees from winter dormancy, a critical factor in their ability to adjust to environmental changes associated with climate change. While other researchers have identified genes involved in producing the first green leaves of spring, the discovery of a master regulator in poplar trees (Populus species) could eventually lead to breeding plants that are better adapted for warmer climates. The results of the study that began more than a decade ago at Oregon State University ...

GALVESTON, Texas — For the first time, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston researchers were able to predict further adaptations of the chikungunya virus that recently spread from Africa to several continents that will likely result in even more efficient transmission and infection of more people by this virus strain. A key factor in a viruses' potential to sustain its circulation and ultimately cause disease is its ability to adapt to new host environments. The number and complexity of these adaptations is shaped by how hospitable the new host is to a certain ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Nearly half of parents say any qualified health care provider – not just a child's usual provider – can do a sports physical, according to a new University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health. One quarter of the 434 parents surveyed in the poll took their child to an alternate location for the most recent sports physical, says Sarah J. Clark, M.P.H. , associate director of the National Poll on Children's Health and associate research scientist in the University of Michigan Department of Pediatrics. Sports physicals ...

Without proper infection prevention in hospitals, and now homes, the Clostridium difficile bacteria poses a major health threat, cautions a Case Western Reserve University infection control researcher. While mainly a concern in hospitals, cases of the C. difficile infection (or C. diff) are on the rise in the community, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that has seen increased reports of the infected people who have had no contact with hospital patients with the infection. The CDC reported 7.6 people out of 100,000 who had no contact with people ...

June 16, 2014 (San Francisco) – Researchers have long understood there is a strong association between diabetes and depression. But new research presented at the American Diabetes Association's 74th Scientific Sessions® shows that symptoms of depression in people with type 2 diabetes can be significantly reduced through interventions for "diabetes distress," suggesting that much of what is being labeled as depression may not be a co-morbid psychiatric disorder after all, but rather a reaction to living with a stressful, complex disease that is often difficult to manage. ...

June 16, 2014 (San Francisco) – Treatments used to decrease the development of type 2 diabetes continue to be effective an average of 15 years later, according to the latest findings of the Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study, a landmark study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The results, presented at the American Diabetes Association's 74th Scientific Sessions®, come more than a decade after the Diabetes Prevention Program, or DPP, reported its original findings. In 2001, after an average of three years of study, the DPP announced that the study's ...

TORONTO, June 16, 2014 — Do you work out for health benefits and feel you are exercising more than enough? You might be among the many Canadians who overrate how hard they work out or underestimate what moderate intensity exercise means, according to a recent study out of York University's Faculty of Health. "Our study findings suggest that the majority of young and middle-aged to old adults underestimate the intensity of physical activity that is required to achieve health benefits," says Professor Jennifer Kuk, School of Kinesiology and Health Science. "This is worrisome ...