COLUMBIA, Mo. – New research from the University of Missouri indicates escapism, social interaction and rewards fuel problematic video-game use among "very casual" to "hardcore" adult gamers. Understanding individual motives that contribute to unhealthy game play could help counselors identify and treat individuals addicted to video games. "The biggest risk factor for pathological video game use seems to be playing games to escape from daily life," said Joe Hilgard, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Psychological Sciences in the MU College of Arts and Science. ...

HOUSTON – (Sept. 23, 2013) – Pacemakers, insulin pumps, defibrillators and other implantable medical devices often have wireless capabilities that allow emergency workers to monitor patients. But these devices have a potential downside: They can be hacked. Researchers at Rice University have come up with a secure way to dramatically cut the risk that an implanted medical device (IMD) could be altered remotely without authorization. Their technology would use the patient's own heartbeat as a kind of password that could only be accessed through touch. Rice electrical ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — A scientific survey of gun dealers and pawnbrokers in 43 U.S. states has found nearly unanimous support for denying gun purchases based on prior convictions and for serious mental illness with a history of violence or alcohol or drug abuse – conditions that might have prevented Washington Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis from legally purchasing a firearm. The research, conducted by the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program, is to be published in the Journal of Urban Health. The research is the third report from the UC Davis' Firearm Licensee ...

Researchers have determined that fingerstick cardiac troponin I assay testing using thepoint-of-care i-STAT device is not accurate enough to determine the exact troponin level without the application of a corrective term. The study was funded by the Department of Emergency Medicine, Loyola University Medical Center and was published in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine. The study was conducted by Devin Loewenstein, BS, Christine Stake, MA and Mark Cichon, DO of Loyola University Chicago, Department of Emergency Medicine. "Cardiac tropnin assays commonly ...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23, 2013 – Audio CDs, all the rage in the '90s, seem increasingly obsolete in a world of MP3 files and iPods, leaving many music lovers with the question of what to do with their extensive compact disk collections. While you could turn your old disks into a work of avant-garde art, researchers in Taiwan have come up with a more practical application: breaking down sewage. The team will present its new wastewater treatment device at the Optical Society's (OSA) Annual Meeting, Frontiers in Optics (FiO) 2013, being held Oct. 6-10 in Orlando, Fla. "Optical ...

Our brains give us the remarkable ability to make sense of situations we've never encountered before—a familiar person in an unfamiliar place, for example, or a coworker in a different job role—but the mechanism our brains use to accomplish this has been a longstanding mystery of neuroscience. Now, researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have demonstrated that our brains could process these new situations by relying on a method similar to the "pointer" system used by computers. "Pointers" are used to tell a computer where to look for information stored elsewhere ...

Researchers from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Boston University, in collaboration with the American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology (AAAAI), have found evidence of the H1N1 influenza vaccine's safety during pregnancy. The national study, which was launched shortly after the H1N1 influenza outbreak of 2009, is summarized in two companion papers published online on September 19 in the journal Vaccine. "The overall results of the study were quite reassuring about the safety of the flu vaccine formulations that contained the pandemic ...

Pediatric researchers have found race- and ethnicity-based disparities in pain management and length of stay among children who came to hospital emergency departments for treatment of abdominal pain. A study team reported on their analysis of a national database of hospital visits in the October issue of Pediatrics. Overall, black, Hispanic and "other" race children were less likely to receive analgesics than white children. After adjusting for confounders, black patients were less likely to receive any analgesic or a narcotic analgesic than white children. Similarly, ...

More than 83,000 volunteer citizen scientists. Over 16 million galaxy classifications. Information on more than 300,000 galaxies. This is what you get when you ask the public for help in learning more about our universe. The project, named Galaxy Zoo 2, is the second phase of a crowdsourcing effort to categorize galaxies in our universe. Researchers say computers are good at automatically measuring properties such as size and color of galaxies, but more challenging characteristics, such as shape and structure, can currently only be determined by the human eye. An international ...

For years, scientists have attempted to understand how Alzheimer's disease harms the brain before memory loss and dementia are clinically detectable. Most researchers think this preclinical stage, which can last a decade or more before symptoms appear, is the critical phase when the disease might be controlled or stopped, possibly preventing the failure of memory and thinking abilities in the first place. Important progress in this effort is reported in October in Lancet Neurology. Scientists at the Charles F. and Joanne Knight Alzheimer Disease Research Center at Washington ...

Friendships matter throughout life, and in early adolescence they provide validation and emotional support. Now a new study has found that friendships across ethnic groups in urban middle schools help protect youths from feeling vulnerable, making them feel less lonely and at the same time safer. As the population of children in the United States grows increasingly diverse, this study has implications for how educators oversee student interactions. The study, by researchers at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, ...

Young children readily learn words from their parents, grandparents, and child care providers in live conversations, but learning from video has proven more difficult. A new study questioned why and found that it's the responsiveness of the interactions that's key: When we respond to children in timely and meaningful ways, they learn—even when that response comes from a screen. The study, by researchers at the University of Washington, Temple University, and the University of Delaware, appears in the journal Child Development. Three dozen 2-year-olds were randomly assigned ...

Playing with blocks may help preschoolers develop the kinds of skills that support later learning in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), according to a new study by researchers at the University of Delaware and Temple University. And for low-income preschoolers, who lag in spatial skills, such play may be especially important. The study is published in the journal Child Development. More than a hundred 3-year-olds of various socioeconomic levels took part in the study. Children who were better at copying block structures were also better at early math, ...

In the U.S., there are nearly 300,000 children with juvenile arthritis and other rheumatic illnesses according to estimates from the American College of Rheumatology (ACR). For pediatric patients with systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA), effective treatment for this disabling disease is imperative. New treatment recommendations that guide physicians caring for children with systemic JIA are now published in the ACR journals, Arthritis & Rheumatism and Arthritis Care & Research. Systemic JIA is defined by the International League of Associations for Rheumatology ...

Drug ads often warn of serious side effects, from nausea and bleeding to blindness, even death. New research suggests that, rather than scaring consumers away, these warnings can improve consumers' opinions and increase product sales when there is a delay between seeing the ad and deciding to buy or consume the product. "Messages that warn consumers about potentially harmful side effects — presumably with the intent to nudge them to act more cautiously — can ironically backfire," says psychological scientist Ziv Carmon of INSEAD in Singapore. Working with Yael Steinhart ...

1. A recent discovery by scientists at A*STAR's Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences (SICS), in close collaboration with researchers at the Singapore Immunology Network (SIgN), provides hope for a new personalised treatment strategy that could use a patient's own blood to treat the infection. This could help treat millions of people living with chronic infections such as HIV, Hepatitis B or Hepatitis C. These findings were published in the August 2013 issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation. 2. Patients suffering from chronic infections often have to undergo ...

A brighter, better, longer-lasting dental implant may soon be on its way to your dentist's office. Dental implants are posts, usually made of titanium, that are surgically placed into the jawbone and topped with artificial teeth. More than dentures or bridges, implants mimic the look and feel of natural teeth. While most dental implants are successful, a small percentage fail and either fall out or must be removed. A scientist at Michigan Technological University wants to lower that rate to zero using nanotechnology. "Dental implants can greatly improve the lives of ...

New research on the most commonly used anaesthetic drug could help to unravel a long-standing mystery about how it induces a pain-free, sleep-like state. General anaesthetics are administered to tens of millions of people every year in hospitals, where they are used to sedate patients undergoing surgery. Despite this, scientists have yet to understand how the drug interacts with its targets in brain cells to achieve this effect. Following years of research on propofol, which has become the most commonly used anaesthetic since it was introduced in the 1980s, researchers ...

Researchers in Melbourne, Australia, have found that even our immune system is subject to performance enhancement, with our bodies giving immune cells the boost they need to ensure the best team is selected to fight infections. The discovery could help in developing new treatments for blood diseases such as leukaemia and autoimmune diseases in which the body attacks its own tissues, such as in diabetes or rheumatoid arthritis. It could also be used to enhance immune response to HIV and other chronic infections. The finding, by researchers at the Walter and Eliza Hall ...

While we grapple with the impact of climate change, archaeologists suggest we spare a thought for Aboriginal Australians who had to cope with the last ice age. "The period scientists call the Last Glacial Maximum, or LGM for short, is the most significant climatic event ever faced by humans on this continent," Associate Professor Sean Ulm from James Cook University in Cairns said. Research recently published in the Journal of Archaeological Science sheds new light on the ways Aboriginal civilisation met the challenges of extreme climate change during the Last Glacial ...

Systematic conservation planning is a multiple-objective process. Identification of important areas and species with high conservation priority is two of the research objectives. China is one of mega-biodiversity countries of the world. Along with rapid economic development and environmental degeneration, native and endemic species of China are confronting growing threats in the last two decades. It is an urgent agenda to set up relevant conservation policies, researches and decision supports so as to better reduce extinction risks of vertebrate animals of China. Amphibians ...

Atlanta, September 22, 2013—When used to treat pediatric patients with intracranial malignant tumors, proton therapy may limit the toxicity of radiation therapy while preserving tumor control, according to research presented today at the American Society for Radiation Oncology's (ASTRO's) 55th Annual Meeting. Typically, central nervous system malignancies are treated with surgical resection and post-operative radiation therapy. Proton therapy, an external beam radiation therapy in which protons deliver precise radiation doses to a tumor, offers significant sparing of ...

Atlanta, September 22, 2013—Patients receiving radiotherapy (RT) for cancers in the pelvic region can experience diarrhea, a negative side effect of radiation treatment. Sulfasalazine, an oral tablet used to treat inflammation of the bowels, had been shown in a past trial of 31 patients to decrease diarrhea during pelvic RT (Killic 2001). Sulfasalazine does not reduce diarrhea, according to research presented today at the American Society of Radiation Oncology's (ASTRO's) 55th Annual Meeting. The study also determined that the medication may be associated with a higher ...

Atlanta, September 22, 2013 — Adding the chemotherapy drug cisplatin to a treatment plan of radiation therapy (RT) and high-dose-rate brachytherapy (HDRB) for stage IIIB cervical cancer is beneficial, according to research presented today at the American Society for Radiation Oncology's (ASTRO's) 55th Annual Meeting. The study also indicated that the combined treatments produced acceptable levels of toxicity. The randomized, controlled trial studied a total of 147 women in Brazil with stage IIIB squamous cell cervical cancer. A stage IIIB classification indicates that ...

Atlanta, September 22, 2013—Proton therapy, an external beam radiotherapy in which protons deliver precise radiation doses to a tumor and spare healthy organs and tissues, is cost-effective in treating medulloblastomas, fast-growing brain tumors that mainly affect children, when compared to standard photon radiation therapy, according to research presented today at the American Society for Radiation Oncology's (ASTRO's) 55th Annual Meeting. The study used a first-order Monte Carlo simulation model to examine a population of 18-year old survivors of medulloblastoma brain ...