EAST LANSING, Mich. --- Overweight political candidates tend to receive fewer votes than their thinner opponents, finds a new study co-authored by a Michigan State University weight bias expert. While past research has found weight discrimination in schools, businesses, entertainment and other facets of American society, this is the first scientific investigation into whether that bias extends to election outcomes, said Mark Roehling, professor of human resources. "We found weight had a significant effect on voting behavior," Roehling said. "Additionally, the greater ...

Most discrimination in the U.S. is not caused by intention to harm people different from us, but by ordinary favoritism directed at helping people similar to us, according to a theoretical review published online in American Psychologist. "We can produce discrimination without having any intent to discriminate or any dislike for those who end up being disadvantaged by our behavior," said University of Washington psychologist Tony Greenwald, who co-authored the review with Thomas Pettigrew of the University of California, Santa Cruz. Greenwald and Pettigrew reviewed ...

A new study from a UT Dallas researcher demonstrates the importance of considering developmental differences when creating programs for cochlear implants in infants. Dr. Andrea Warner-Czyz, assistant professor in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, recently published the research in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. "This is the first study to show that infants process degraded speech that simulates a cochlear implant differently than older children and adults, which begs for new signal processing strategies to optimize the sound delivered to ...

Testosterone in males is generally associated with aggression and definitely not with good parenting. Insights from a highly social fish can help understand how other androgenic steroids, like testosterone, can shape a male's parenting skills, according to a recent Georgia State University research study. Once bluebanded gobies become fathers, they stay close to the developing eggs, vigorously fan and rub them until they hatch, and also protect them from mothers who would eat them. By injecting a series of chemicals into the brains of these fathers, the research team ...

Jon Grabowski, a marine science and fisheries expert at Northeastern University's Marine Science Center in Nahant, Massachusetts, has been working with other fisheries scientists as well as economists, social scientists, and policy makers to determine the best strategies for dealing with all of the Northeast region's fisheries that impact habitat, which includes cod, haddock, cusk, scallops, clams and other fish that live near the sea floor and are of significant socioeconomic value to the region. In research published online last month in the journal Reviews in Fisheries ...

Johns Hopkins researchers say they have developed a technique that can predict — with 95 percent accuracy — which stroke victims will benefit from intravenous, clot-busting drugs and which will suffer dangerous and potentially lethal bleeding in the brain. Reporting online May 15 in the journal Stroke, the Johns Hopkins team says these predictions were made possible by applying a new method they developed that uses standard magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to measures damage to the blood-brain barrier that protects the brain from drug exposure. If further tests ...

A series of research articles published ahead of print in the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy have identified a number of existing pharmaceutical drugs and compounds under development that may offer effective therapies against Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). In the first study, researchers screened a library of 290 pharmaceutical drugs, either FDA-approved or in advanced clinical development for antiviral activity against the MERS coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) in cell culture. They found 27 ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Cabo Pulmo is a close-knit community in Baja California Sur, Mexico, and the best preserved coral reef in the Gulf of California. But now the lands adjacent to the reef are under threat from a mega-development project, "Cabo Dorado," should construction go ahead. Scientists at the University of California, Riverside have published a report on the terrestrial biodiversity of the Cabo Pulmo region that shows the project is situated in an area of extreme conservation value, the center of which is Punta Arena, an idyllic beach setting proposed to be completely ...

The El Niño–Southern Oscillation is known to influence global surface temperatures, with El Niño conditions leading to warmer temperatures and La Niña conditions leading to colder temperatures. However, a new study in Geophysical Research Letters shows that some types of El Niño do not have this effect, a finding that could explain recent decade-scale slowdowns in global warming. The authors examine three historical temperature data sets and classify past El Niño events as traditional or central Pacific. They find that global surface temperatures were anomalously warm ...

Birth control is used worldwide by more than 60 million women. Since its introduction, it has changed certain aspects of women's lives including family roles, gender roles and social life. New research in The Journal of Sexual Medicine found a link between birth control and women's preferences for psychophysical traits in a sexual mate. The researchers utilized a PMI (Partner's Masculinity Index) to determine the male traits that women found attractive during the fertile phase of their menstrual cycle. The participants were from Central Italy and divided into two groups ...

New research in Criminal Behavior and Mental Health aimed to find the relationship between participation in organized sports and an increase in hazardous drinking. Unlike previous research, the study focused on an underrepresented group – young offenders – adolescents who were either excluded from school or involved with the justice system. 93 British male young offenders from a local Youth Offending Team participated in the study, as well as 53 non-offenders from local schools. Both groups had similarly low socioeconomic status. Participants were asked to partake in ...

Flyways used by migratory birds as they travel across America have long been a topic of fascination for ornithologists. For larger species like waterfowl that are easily visible during their migratory flights, these flyways have been described, but until now the flyways for smaller-bodied birds have been largely based on conjecture. New research in the Journal of Biogeography has used analyses of information from the eBird citizen-science database to describe week by week the distributions of 93 North American land birds. By determining the level of similarity in the ...

Lake Baikal, which is usually still frozen over at this time of year, can clearly be seen in the image. At this time, though, the lake has lost all of its ice coverage already even though snow still surrounds it. Temperatures in this region have skyrocketed in the past few weeks to the 70s prompting outbreaks of fires. Temperatures are usually cooler until late July/early August when the bulk of the wildfires in this area normally erupt. Careless handling with fire and withered dry grass fires on the croplands reportedly were the main reasons for the fires. The Voice ...

PARMA, ID – 'Fuji' apples have become increasingly popular among consumers, but the apple variety faces some challenges on its path to full consumer appreciation. Research has determined that "consumer acceptance" of apples depends largely on fruit color, size, eating quality, and texture. Consumers are very discerning: poor color can drastically reduce the value of red apples, even if their size is acceptable. The poor and inconsistent peel color of 'Fuji' apple strains has limited the apple's marketability. The authors of a new study say that the introduction of new 'Fuji' ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Soon, making and improving medical drugs could be as easy for chemists as stacking blocks is for a child. University of Illinois chemist Martin Burke, a pioneer of a technique that constructs complex molecules from simple chemical "building blocks," led a group that found that thousands of compounds in a class of molecules called polyenes – many of which have great potential as drugs – can be built simply and economically from a scant one dozen different building blocks. The researchers published their findings in the journal Nature Chemistry. "We ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Researchers at the University of California, Riverside have developed a novel nanometer scale ruthenium oxide anchored nanocarbon graphene foam architecture that improves the performance of supercapacitors, a development that could mean faster acceleration in electric vehicles and longer battery life in portable electronics. The researchers found that supercapacitors, an energy storage device like batteries and fuel cells, based on transition metal oxide modified nanocarbon graphene foam electrode could work safely in aqueous electrolyte and deliver ...

New Rochelle, NY, May 19, 2014—Two studies of the anti-depressive drug duloxetine, a serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRI), compared its effectiveness and safety to either fluoxetine or placebo in children and adolescents with major depressive disorder (MDD). The results of these first controlled trials of duloxetine in pediatric patients with MDD are published in Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The articles are available free on the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology. Graham ...

URBANA, Ill. – Maybe the numbers on the scale aren't alarming, but that doesn't mean that healthy-weight children get a pass on exercising, according to a new University of Illinois study published in Pediatrics. "The FITKids study demonstrates the extent to which physical activity can improve body composition, and that's important because it matters to your health where fat is stored. But the study is also interesting for what happened in the control group to the kids who didn't exercise," said Naiman Khan, a postdoctoral researcher in the U of I's Division of Nutritional ...

ANN ARBOR—A device that essentially listens for light waves could help open up the last frontier of the electromagnetic spectrum—the terahertz range. So-called T-rays, which are light waves too long for human eyes to see, could help airport security guards find chemical and other weapons. They might let doctors image body tissues with less damage to healthy areas. And they could give astronomers new tools to study planets in other solar systems. Those are just a few possible applications. But because terahertz frequencies fall between the capabilities of the specialized ...

Philadelphia, PA, May 19, 2014 – While dementia patients can often suffer from depression and declining physical and mental ability, exercise has been shown to help improve both their physical and psychological wellbeing. Researchers at Teesside University in the U.K. investigated how combining cognitive activities and elements of yoga, tai chi, qigong and meditation with routine physical exercise affected dementia patients. They found that a holistic exercise program focusing on both mind and body can help improve quality of life for dementia patients. Their findings are ...

Scientists have advanced a brain-scanning technology that tracks what the brain is doing by shining dozens of tiny LED lights on the head. This new generation of neuroimaging compares favorably to other approaches but avoids the radiation exposure and bulky magnets the others require, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The new optical approach to brain scanning is ideally suited for children and for patients with electronic implants, such as pacemakers, cochlear implants and deep brain stimulators (used to treat Parkinson's ...

The Skunk Fire continues to burn on the San Carlos Apache Reservation in southeastern Arizona and NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image of the smoke on May 17 at 20:15 UTC (4:15 p.m. EDT/1:15 p.m. MST). A Fire Weather Watch has been posted for the region for May 20. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured this photograph of the smoke. The extent of the fire (the heat) is outlined in red in this image). According to Inciweb, the multi-U.S. agency Incident Information System website that ...

Bethesda, MD (May 19, 2014) — The editors of Gastroenterology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Institute, are pleased to announce the publication of this year's highly anticipated special 13th issue on the intestinal microbiome, which is considered one of the hottest areas of science today. "We are beginning to understand the ways by which the microbial environment of the gut may play a role in both the maintance of human health and the development of certain diseases. Data in this special issue of Gastroenterology may lead ...

Imagine a future in which our electrical gadgets are no longer limited by plugs and external power sources. This intriguing prospect is one of the reasons for the current interest in building the capacity to store electrical energy directly into a wide range of products, such as a laptop whose casing serves as its battery, or an electric car powered by energy stored in its chassis, or a home where the dry wall and siding store the electricity that runs the lights and appliances. It also makes the small, dull grey wafers that graduate student Andrew Westover and Assistant ...

Observations made over the past 29 years in Kenya as part of one of the world's longest-running studies of a wild primate show how having offspring influences the health of female baboons. These observations highlight that females are mostly injured on days when they are likely to conceive. In addition, injuries heal the slowest when they are suckling their young. The study, published in Springer's journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, is led by Elizabeth Archie of the University of Notre Dame in the US and the National Museums of Kenya. Reproduction can be dangerous ...