As a human race we strive for perfection, knowing that no one is perfect. A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research offers insight into why we surround ourselves with people who help bring out our best but don't make us feel terrible when we stray from perfection. "In a situation requiring two people to use self-control, either both indulge, both abstain, or one indulges while the other abstains. Our research looks at how these different outcomes impact people who are friends," write authors Michael L. Lowe (Texas A&M University) and Kelly L. Haws (Vanderbilt University). In ...

When shopping online, we often have the option of clicking on additional product photos taken from different angles or showing additional features. According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, looking at more photos when making product comparisons can ultimately inhibit us from noticing what differentiates them in the first place. "The intuition that 'seeing more is always better' does not consider the possibility that when presented with too many product photos, the way we process information is altered," write authors Jayson Shi Jia (University of ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (May 21, 2014) – Researchers at the UNC School of Medicine have found a new target for treating chronic pain: an enzyme called PIP5K1C. In a paper published today in the journal Neuron, a team of researchers led by Mark Zylka, PhD, Associate Professor of Cell Biology and Physiology, shows that PIP5K1C controls the activity of cellular receptors that signal pain. By reducing the level of the enzyme, researchers showed that the levels of a crucial lipid called PIP2 in pain-sensing neurons is also lessened, thus decreasing pain. They also found a compound ...

Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center have used computer simulations of cancer cells – cancer avatars – to identify drugs most likely to kill cancer cells isolated from patients' brain tumors. The findings, published in May 21 online issue of the Journal of Translational Medicine, may help researchers stratify cancer patients for clinical trials according to their cancers' genomic signatures and predicted sensitivities to different cancer drugs. Such an approach would allow scientists to selectively test cancer ...

PITTSBURGH, May 21, 2014 – A precise rhythm of electrical impulses transmitted from cells in the inner ear coaches the brain how to hear, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. They report the first evidence of this developmental process today in the online version of Neuron. The ear generates spontaneous electrical activity to trigger a response in the brain before hearing actually begins, said senior investigator Karl Kandler, Ph.D., professor of otolaryngology and neurobiology, Pitt School of Medicine. These patterned ...

An online training module designed for the evaluation and care of chronic pain greatly improved medical student clinical skills, according to a report in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. The module, built by the University of Pittsburgh and using an elderly woman with chronic lower back pain as a case study, is the first curriculum resource created through the efforts of the National Institutes of Health Pain Consortium's Centers of Excellence in Pain Education program (CoEPEs). The program was developed in response to the Affordable Care Act's mandate to ...

When University of Illinois Associate Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Hyunjoon Kong, graduate student Cartney Smith, and colleagues set out to improve MR imaging (MRI), they turned current contrast agent technology on its head—or rather, they turned it inside out. The new compound they designed in collaboration with Illinois' Roger Adams Professor of Chemistry Steven C. Zimmerman is not only more effective, but also self-assembling. Kong is also a member of the Regenerative Biology and Tissue Engineering research theme at the Institute for Genomic Biology. When ...

Currently accepted wisdom in the corporate world is that in order to motivate frontline employees who serve customers, corporations need to increase their salary, make them feel more positive about the company, or give them more explicit instructions on how to interact with customers. A new study led by Drexel University's Daniel Korschun, PhD, an assistant professor at the LeBow College of Business, examines how frontline employees respond to corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities such as charitable giving, environmental programs and ethical practices. The study ...

Universal guidelines and improvements in technology are needed to reduce injuries and deaths from improper placement of nasogastric feeding tubes in pediatric patients, according to a comprehensive review of published literature. The review, conducted by the New Opportunities for Verification of Enteral Tube Location (NOVEL) Work Group Project of the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (A.S.P.E.N.) found that while the bedside placement of a nasogastric feeding tube is a common procedure conducted by nurses, incorrect placement can have serious and ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — A new fuel-cell concept, developed by an Michigan State University researcher, will allow biodiesel plants to eliminate the creation of hazardous wastes while removing their dependence on fossil fuel from their production process. The platform, which uses microbes to glean ethanol from glycerol and has the added benefit of cleaning up the wastewater, will allow producers to reincorporate the ethanol and the water into the fuel-making process, said Gemma Reguera, MSU microbiologist and one of the co-authors. "With a saturated glycerol market, traditional ...

New Rochelle, NY, May 21, 2014—The workplace can provide an ideal environment to implement support, well-being, and testing interventions aimed at reducing risky alcohol use among men. By targeting male-dominated industries, in particular, alcohol screening and prevention efforts may be effective in reducing alcohol use, according to a Review article in Journal of Men's Health, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Men's Health website. A team of Australian researchers led by Nicole Lee, ...

NEW HYDE PARK, NY – A recent study by investigators from LIJ Medical Center demonstrated that using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in men with an elevated prostate specific antigen (PSA) resulted in a prostate cancer detection rate that was twice as high as data reported in the March 1999 Prostate journal that analyzed men undergoing the standard 12-core biopsy with an elevated PSA. Physicians in the recent trial used a targeted approach to evaluate prostate cancer that combines MR imaging and transrectal ultrasound fusion guided prostate biopsy. Given the limitations ...

PITTSBURGH—Web services companies, such as Facebook, Google and Microsoft, all make promises about how they will use personal information they gather. But ensuring that millions of lines of code in their systems operate in ways consistent with privacy promises is labor-intensive and difficult. A team from Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft Research, however, has shown these compliance checks can be automated. The researchers developed a prototype automated system that is now running on the data analytics pipeline of Bing, Microsoft's search engine. According to ...

According to the Alaskan Division of Forestry the Funny River fire was very active overnight (May 20) because of low humidity. Currently the fire is estimated to be near 7,000 acres and has reached Tustumena Lake. It is spreading east and west along the shore, is 10 miles long, and is about a mile wide with broadening at the lake shore. There have been no evacuations or reports of any structures lost. Early this morning (May 21), flame lengths of 125 feet with erratic fire behavior were reported. Winds for today are forecasted to remain out of the north keeping the fire ...

Radioactivity is usually associated with nuclear fallout or comic-book spider bites, but in very small amounts it can be a useful tool for diagnosing diseases. Small molecules containing a radioactive isotope of fluorine called "18F radiotracers" are used to detect and track certain diseases in patients. Once injected into the body, these molecules accumulate in specific targets, such as tumors, and can be visualized by their radioactive tag on a positron emission tomography (PET) scan. The 18F tags quickly decay so no radioactivity remains after about a day. But there ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (May 21, 2014)—Having premenstrual syndrome (PMS) before menopause does not mean women will be troubled by hot flashes afterward. But they may face more menopause complaints other than hot flashes, such as trouble with memory and concentration, finds a new study published online in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS). The research team at the Helsinki University Central Hospital and Folkhälsan Research Institute in Helsinki, Finland, are the first to show a link between PMS and a worse quality of life after menopause. They ...

National Museum of Natural History scientist Bert Van Bocxlaer and an international team of researchers revealed that anthropogenic changes in Africa's Lake Malaŵi are a driving force behind the increase of urogenital schistosomiasis, a debilitating tropical disease caused by parasitic flatworms. Scientists estimate that 250 million people are affected by schistosomiasis worldwide, and 600 million more are at risk of contracting it. In some villages along the shorelines of Lake Malaŵi, 73 percent of the people and up to 94 percent of the schoolchildren are infected ...

Field and laboratory work by Omar Torres-Carvajal from Museo de Zoología QCAZ, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, and his former undergraduate student Simón Lobos has resulted in the discovery of a gem-looking new species of shade lizard from the cloudforests in northwestern Ecuador. This region is part of the 274,597 km2 Tumbes-Chocó-Magdalena hotspot that lies west of the Andes. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys. Shade lizards (genus Alopoglossus) are widely distributed across tropical South America. They differ from most other lizards ...

A tiny Mediterranean island visited by the likes of Madonna, Sting, Julia Roberts and Sharon Stone is now the focus of a ground-breaking study by University of Leicester geologists. Pantelleria, a little-known island between Sicily and Tunisia, is a volcano with a remarkable past: 45 thousand years ago, the entire island was covered in a searing-hot layer of green glass. Volcanologists Drs Mike Branney, Rebecca Williams and colleagues at the University of Leicester Department of Geology have been uncovering previously unknown facts about the island's physical history. And ...

Patients receiving chemical treatment for cancer often suffer fatigue and body weight loss, two of the most worrying effects of this therapy linked to the alteration of their circadian rhythms. The circadian system, better known as our biological clock, is responsible for coordinating all the processes that take place in our organism. If it does not function correctly, what is known as a circadian disruption or chronodisruption, has for years been linked to an increased incidence of cancer, obesity, diabetes, depression, cognitive problems or cardiovascular diseases. "Also, ...

A new way of measuring sea level using satellite navigation system signals, for instance GPS, has been implemented by scientists at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. Sea level and its variation can easily be monitored using existing coastal GPS stations, the scientists have shown. Measuring sea level is an increasingly important part of climate research, and a rising mean sea level is one of the most tangible consequences of climate change. Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have studied new ways of measuring sea level that could become important ...

Research from North Carolina State University finds that dam removal improves spawning grounds for American shad and seems likely to improve survival rates for adult fish, juveniles and eggs – but for different reasons. The researchers focused on a small tributary in North Carolina called the Little River, where three dams were removed in the late 1990s and early 2000s. American shad (Alosa sapidissima) spend the bulk of their adult lives in saltwater, but return to freshwater rivers like this one to spawn. While in these freshwater environments, the adult shad do not ...

Every time we have an infection or a headache and take a pill, we get a lot more drugs than our body actually needs. The reason is that only a fraction of the drugs in a pill reaches the right places in the body; the rest never reaches its destination and may cause unwelcome side effects before they are flushed out of the body again. This kind of major overdosing is especially true when doctors treat brain diseases, because the brain does not easily accept entering drugs. "People with brain diseases are often given huge amounts of unnecessary drugs. During a long life, ...

The headlights – two eyes, the radiator cowling – a smiling mouth: This is how our brain sometimes creates a face out of a car front. The same happens with other objects: in house facades, trees or stones – a "human face" can often be detected as well. Prof. Dr. Gyula Kovács from Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Germany) knows the reason why. "Faces are of tremendous importance for human beings," the neuroscientist explains. That's why in the course of the evolution our visual perception has specialized in the recognition of faces in particular. "This sometimes even ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. --- Cyberbullying isn't just a problem in middle class and affluent areas. Teenagers in poor, high-crime neighborhoods also experience online bullying, finds new research led by a Michigan State University criminologist. The study suggests the "digital divide" – the gap between people with access to online technologies and those without – may be nonexistent, at least when it comes to cyberbullying, said Thomas J. Holt, MSU associate professor of criminal justice. "We found neighborhood conditions that are indicative of poverty and crime are a significant ...