Website privacy policies are almost obligatory for many online services, but for anyone who reads these often unwieldy documents, trust in the provider is more commonly reduced than gained, according to US researchers. Almost every commercial website, social network, search engine and banking site has a privacy policy. Indeed, these and countless other sites that scrape personal information via forms, logins and tracking cookies are obliged by law in some parts of the world to post a document online giving details of how they protect any personal data you give the site ...

New Rochelle, NY, May 20, 2014—Studies have identified mobile phones and related devices as sources of metal sensitization and potential causes of allergic contact dermatitis (ACD). Despite efforts to control allergen release in phones, many phones on the market release levels of metals, such as nickel and chromium, which are sufficient to induce ACD, according to an article in Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Pulmonology, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Pulmonology ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio— Scientists delivered a mostly negative forecast for how climate change will affect Ohioans during the next year or so, and well beyond. Researchers report that the projected increase in precipitation and the associated runoff will likely lead to a larger-than-average bloom of harmful blue-green algae in Lake Erie this summer. In addition, the development of an El Niño over the Pacific later this year may result in a very dry 2015 in Ohio. But Ohio may fare better than its neighbors in one respect: While drought and high temperatures are expected to shrink ...

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have uncovered a molecule in an animal model that acts as a key player in establishing the organization of the auditory system. The molecule, a protein known as Bmp7, is produced during embryonic development and acts to help sensory cells find their ultimate position on the tonotopic map, which is the fundamental principle of organization in the auditory system. The tonotopic map groups sensory cells by the sound frequencies that stimulate them. The study is the first to identify one of the molecular mechanisms that determines ...

This news release is available in French. One company's trash can be another's treasure. Take Marmite. Made from a by-product of commercial beer production, the yeast-based spread has topped toast throughout the Commonwealth for decades. By recuperating the waste product from one company, another was able to thrive. Environmental concerns are at the forefront of government policy, so the time is right for companies worldwide to adopt this type of resource exchange, known as industrial symbiosis (IS). A new study by Concordia University researcher Raymond Paquin ...

VIDEO: Cockrell School of Engineering assistant professor Donglei (Emma) Fan and her mechanical engineering team have built the fastest, smallest nanomotor to date. The team's nanomotor could enable controlled drug delivery... Click here for more information. Researchers at the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have built the smallest, fastest and longest-running tiny synthetic motor to date. The team's nanomotor is an important step toward ...

A program aimed at reducing behavior problems in order to boost academic achievement has improved performance in math and reading among low-income kindergartners and first graders, according to a study by researchers at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Their findings, which appear in the Journal of Educational Psychology, point to the value of well-designed interventions to improve education, the study's authors say. "Supporting young low-income children so they can reach their potential in the classroom and beyond ...

In a basement lab on BYU's campus, mechanical engineering professor Julie Crockett analyzes water as it bounces like a ball and rolls down a ramp. This phenomenon occurs because Crockett and her colleague Dan Maynes have created a sloped channel that is super-hydrophobic, or a surface that is extremely difficult to wet. In layman's terms, it's the most extreme form of water proof. Engineers like Crockett and Maynes have spent decades studying super-hydrophobic surfaces because of the plethora of real-life applications. And while some of this research has resulted in ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A team of international researchers has sequenced the genome of the Nevada dampwood termite, providing an inside look into the biology of the social insect and uncovering new genetic targets for pest control. Michael Scharf, a Purdue University professor of entomology who participated in the collaborative study, said the genome could help researchers develop control strategies that are more specific than the broad-spectrum chemicals conventionally used to treat termite infestations. "The termite genome reveals many unique genetic targets that can ...

This news release is available in German. Leipzig. For several decades scientists have been trying to come up with an explanation for the formation of the enigmatic, vegetation-free circles frequently found in certain African grassland regions. Now researchers have tested different prevailing hypotheses as to their respective plausibility. For the first time they have carried out a detailed analysis of the spatial distribution of these fairy circles – and discovered a remarkably regular and spatially comprehensive homogenous distribution pattern. This may best be explained ...

Research conducted at the University of Granada has shown that the cyclical phenomena that affect the environment, like climate change, in the atmosphere-ocean dynamic and, even, disturbances to planetary orbits, have existed since hundreds of millions of year ago and can be studied by analysing fossils. This is borne out by the palaeontological data analysed, which have facilitated the characterization of irregular cyclical paleoenvironmental changes, lasting between less than 1 day and up to millions of years. Francisco J. Rodríguez-Tovar, Professor de Stratigraphy ...

Computer simulations play an increasingly important role in the description and development of new materials. Yet, despite major advances in computer technology, the simulations in statistical physics are typically restricted to systems of up to a few 100,000 particles, which is many times smaller than the actual material quantities used in typical experiments. Researchers therefore use so-called finite-size corrections in order to adjust the results obtained for comparatively small simulation systems to the macroscopic scale. A team of researchers from Johannes Gutenberg ...

In theory, the laws of physics are absolute. However, when it comes to the laws of thermodynamics—the science that studies how heat and temperature relate to energy—there are times where they no longer seem to apply. In a paper recently published in EPJ B, Robert Adamietz from the University of Augsburg, Germany, and colleagues have demonstrated that a theoretical model of the environment's influence on a particle does not violate the third law of thermodynamics, despite appearances to the contrary. These findings are relevant for systems at the micro or nanometer scale ...

WASHINGTON, May 20, 2014 – To keep your new car looking sleek and shiny for years, factories need to make certain that the coats of paint on it are applied properly. But ensuring that every coat of paint—whether it is on a car or anything else—is of uniform thickness and quality is not easy. Now researchers have developed a new way to measure the thickness of paint layers and the size of particles embedded inside. Unlike conventional methods, the paint remains undamaged, making the technique useful for a variety of applications from cars to artifacts, cancer detection ...

A substance that comes from pine bark is a potential source for a new treatment of melanoma, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers. Current melanoma drugs targeting single proteins can initially be effective, but resistance develops relatively quickly and the disease recurs. In those instances, resistance usually develops when the cancer cell's circuitry bypasses the protein that the drug acts on, or when the cell uses other pathways to avoid the point on which the drug acts. "To a cancer cell, resistance is like a traffic problem in its circuitry," ...

AURORA, Colo. (May 20, 2014) – School-based influenza vaccine programs have the potential to reach many children at affordable costs and with parental support, but these programs are limited by low rates of reimbursement from third-party payers, according to recently published study results by researchers from the University of Colorado School of Medicine. A school-based flu vaccine program in the Denver Public Schools was effective at reaching nearly one-third of the students, but billing and reimbursement issues posed significant problems for administrators of the program. "The ...

Researchers at Western University (London, Canada) have shown how the bacteria primarily responsible for causing strep throat can be used to fight colon cancer. By engineering a streptococcal bacterial toxin to attach itself to tumour cells, they are forcing the immune system to recognize and attack the cancer. Kelcey Patterson, a PhD Candidate at Western and the lead author on the study, showed that the engineered bacterial toxin could significantly reduce the size of human colon cancer tumours in mice, with a drastic reduction in the instances of metastasis. By using ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Parents – especially those of overweight children – give schools a failing grade for efforts to encourage healthy habits that combat childhood obesity, according to a new poll from the University of Michigan. According to the latest University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health, parents with at least one overweight child (25 percent of all parents in the poll) were more likely to give schools a failing grade of D or F for obesity-related efforts than parents of normal-weight children. Parents of overweight ...

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- The use of simulation techniques in medical education, such as lifelike mannequins and computer systems, results in improved patient care, better outcomes and other benefits, according to a study led by a Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine researcher. William C. McGaghie, PhD, and colleagues analyzed 23 medical education studies that measured the effects of simulation-based mastery learning (SBML). A qualitative synthesis of these studies found that SBML improved outcomes in four areas: the educational laboratory, patient care practices, ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- The patient and caregiver-centered Aging Brain Care program, developed by researchers at the Regenstrief Institute and the Indiana University Center for Aging Research, is attracting nationwide interest for its ability to improve health outcomes and quality of care for those with cognitive impairment while dramatically lowering costs to patients and health care systems. On May 22 and 23, a team of physicians and nurse managers from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center will visit Indianapolis and Lafayette, ...

PITTSBURGH, May 20, 2014 – Educational campaigns meant to dissuade college students from initiating hookah tobacco smoking may be more successful if they combat positive perceptions of hookah use as attractive and romantic, rather than focusing solely on the harmful components of hookah tobacco smoke, a new University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine study found. The research, supported by the National Cancer Institute, examined the sequence of events around which university students first smoke tobacco from a hookah, also known as a water pipe, in an effort to determine ...

Premature ejaculation is one of the most common sexual disorders in men. But it is not just the men who suffer; it also causes increased psychological strain and stress in women, as a new survey conducted by Andrea Burri, a clinical psychologist at the University of Zurich, reveals. Around 40 percent of over 1,500 women polled from Mexico, Italy and South Korea indicated that ejaculation control is very important for satisfactory intercourse. It is not the short duration of the act of lovemaking that is primarily regarded as the main source of sexual frustration by the ...

Chicago, May 19, 2014—The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research has released the results of a major survey on long-term care in the United States. The study, the second on this topic done by AP-NORC, provides much-needed data on how Americans are, or are not, planning for long-term care as policy makers grapple with how to plan for and finance high-quality long-term care in the United States. "Families are essential to providing long-term care so we wanted to explore their role further," said Trevor Tompson, director of the AP-NORC Center. "We conducted ...

The Physical Activity and Nutrition in Children Study, PANIC, carried out by the Institute of Biomedicine at the University of Eastern Finland shows that low levels of physical activity combined with heavy use of electronic media and sedentary behaviour are linked to an increased risk for type 2 diabetes and vascular diseases already in 6–8 year-old children. The study was published in International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, an esteemed journal in the field of exercise and nutrition. Heavy use of electronic media has adverse health effects ...

Aerothermoelasticity has become a hot research area for several years around the world. Professor YANG Chao and his group from Beihang University set out to tackle this problem. Their work, entitled "A high-efficiency aerothermoelastic analysis method", was published in Sci China-Phys Mech Astron, 2014, 57(6): 1111-1118. A hypersonic aircraft generally refers to a hypersonic flight vehicle whose flight Mach number is greater than 5.0 and which can fly in the atmosphere and across the atmosphere. Because of its outstanding performance, aerodynamic heating would clearly ...