NEW YORK CITY — Morning sickness, shiny hair, and bizarre and intense cravings for pickles and ice cream — what expectations do pregnant women impose on their bodies, and how are those expectations influenced by cultural perspectives on pregnancy? Danielle Bessett, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Cincinnati, will present her research on this issue at the 108th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association. Although previous studies have indicated that women primarily rely on their health care providers and pregnancy guides to find ...

NEW YORK CITY — Immigration judges should be allowed to consider a person's family and social ties to the United States before ordering the deportation of legal permanent residents for minor offenses, says a professor at the University of California, Merced. "The reason legal permanent residents can be deported for minor crimes — even if they have lived in the United States for many years — is that there is little to no due process in immigration courts," sociology Professor Tanya Golash-Boza said. "Under current laws, if a person has a prior conviction for a wide range ...

NEW YORK -- An Indiana University study found that college students' experiences are largely shaped by the debt they accrue, with debt-free students more likely to live the "play hard" lifestyle often associated with the college years, where social lives can trump academics. Sociologist Daniel Rudel said this is one of the first studies to examine how student loan debt affects students' college experiences. He and colleague Natasha Yurk, also a graduate student in the Department of Sociology in IU Bloomington's College of Arts and Sciences, found "real and significant ...

In what is the biggest study of its kind to date, researchers from Technische Universität München (TUM) have identified over 10,000 different proteins in cancer cells. "Nearly all anti-tumor drugs are targeted against cellular proteins," says Prof. Bernhard Küster, Head of the TUM Chair of Proteomics and Bioanalytics. "Identifying the proteome the protein portfolio of tumor cells increases our chances of finding new targets for drugs." The scientists investigated 59 tumor cell lines from the US National Cancer Institute. The "NCI-60" cell lines represent the most common ...

The California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) today released new data based on interviews with more than 44,000 households in California. The survey, conducted by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, covered hundreds of topics affecting state residents' health and well-being. Data on nearly 200 of these topics were released today on AskCHIS, the center's award-winning, free, easy-to-use Web tool that provides data by state, region, county and some service-planning areas in Los Angeles and San Diego counties. Even more data were released through free, downloadable ...

3-N-butylphthalide, a green botanical medicine, is a successfully synthesized and stable chemical drug used for the treatment of ischemic stroke that has independent intellectual property rights in China. The first L-isomer, originally extracted from celery seed, was artificially synthesized from racemic acid, also known as butylphthalide. L-3-n-butylphthalide has been shown to reduce β-amylase-induced neuronal apoptosis and improve cognitive function in Alzheimer's disease animal models. As a neuroprotective drug for cerebrovascular disease, 3-n-butylphthalide has ...

The middle cerebral artery territory comprises the corticospinal tract, which is responsible for fine motor activity of the hands, and the corticoreticulospinal tract, which is involved in postural control and locomotor function, and therefore, motor weakness is one of the most disabling sequelae of a middle cerebral artery infarct. However, little is known about motor outcomes in patients with a complete middle cerebral artery territory infarct. Prof. Sung Ho Jang and colleagues from College of Medicine, Yeungnam University investigated 23 patients with a complete middle ...

In multiple sclerosis, gray matter atrophy is extensive, and cognitive deficits and mood disorders are frequently encountered. It has been conjectured that focal atrophy is associated with emotional decline. However, conventional MRI has revealed that the pathological characteristics cannot fully account for the mood disorders. Dr. Aiyu Lin and colleagues from the First Affiliated Hospital of Fujian Medical University used the voxel-based morphometry method to compare the difference in the clinical manifestations and imaging parameters of Chinese patients with multiple ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- By tracking the previously unknown movements of a set of specialized cells, Whitehead Institute scientists are shedding new light on how the immune system mounts a successful defense against hostile, ever-changing invaders. Central to the immune response is the activity inside structures known as germinal centers (GCs), which form in the body's lymph nodes upon detection of a foreign virus or bacteria. Within the GCs, populations of antibody-producing B cells move through continual cycles of mutation in an effort to generate antibodies perfectly suited ...

Boston, Mass., -- A mother's perceived social status predicts her child's brain development and stress indicators, finds a study at Boston Children's Hospital. While previous studies going back to the 1950s have linked objective socioeconomic factors -- such as parental income or education -- to child health, achievement and brain function, the new study is the first to link brain function to maternal self-perception. In the study, children whose mothers saw themselves as having a low social status were more likely to have increased cortisol levels, an indicator of stress, ...

Results from a longitudinal study show that children who exhibit lower conscientiousness (e.g., irresponsible, careless, not persevering) could experience worse overall health, including greater obesity, as adults. The Oregon Research Institute (ORI) study examines the relationship between childhood personality and adult health and shows a strong association between childhood conscientiousness (organized, dependable, self-disciplined) and health status in adulthood. ORI scientist Sarah Hampson, Ph.D., and colleagues at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health, Hawaii report ...

Washington, D.C—The key to understanding Earth's evolution is to look at how heat is conducted in the deep lower mantle—a region some 400 to 1,800 miles (660 to 2,900 kilometers) below the surface. Researchers at the Carnegie Institution, with colleagues at the University of Illinois, have for the first time been able to experimentally simulate the pressure conditions in this region to measure thermal conductivity using a new measurement technique developed by the collaborators and implemented by the Carnegie team on the mantle material magnesium oxide (MgO). They found ...

Bending light beams to your whim sounds like a job for a wizard or an a complex array of bulky mirrors, lenses and prisms, but a few tiny liquid bubbles may be all that is necessary to open the doors for next-generation, high-speed circuits and displays, according to Penn State researchers. To combine the speed of optical communication with the portability of electronic circuitry, researchers use nanoplasmonics -- devices that use short electromagnetic waves to modulate light on the nanometer scale, where conventional optics do not work. However, aiming and focusing this ...

A collaborative biological survey that focused on the insects of French Polynesia has resulted in the discovery of over 100 tiny predatory beetle species in Tahiti, 28 of these species newly described in the open-access journal ZooKeys. The predatory beetles range in size from 3-8 mm long, and have evolutionarily lost their flight wings, making them homebodies living in small patches of mountain forest. The author, James Liebherr of Cornell University, states "It is exhilarating working with such a fauna, because every new locality or ecological situation has the high ...

Opening our eyes and seeing the world before us, full of objects, is a simple action we may take for granted. Yet our brain is constantly carrying out a huge analysis only to let us see a flower, a pen, the face of our children. Where exactly in our brain does shape become meaning? A group of scientists coordinated by Davide Zoccolan of SISSA of Trieste, in collaboration with the team headed over by Riccardo Zecchina of Polytechnic University of Turin (within the Programma Neuroscienze 2008/2009 financed by Compagnia di San Paolo), studied a specific area of the brain ...

The day before the child's death was not a pleasant one, because it was not a sudden injury that killed the 10-13 year old child who was buried in the medieval town of Ribe in Denmark 800 years ago. The day before death was full of suffering because the child had been given a large dose of mercury in an attempt to cure a severe illness. This is now known to chemist Kaare Lund Rasmussen from University of Southern Denmark – because he and his colleagues have developed a new methodology that can reveal an unheard amount of details from very shortly before a person's death. ...

Researchers at the University of Southampton have identified new markers of tuberculosis (TB) that may help in the development of new diagnostic tests and treatments. Published online in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, the study investigated the proteins that are released by a break down of the lung structure in TB patients. Lung damage causes both transmission of infection and mortality. They found that fragments released by break down of the lung's key proteins (collagen and elastin), are increased in the sputum of patients with TB. They also discovered that ...

August 9, 2013, Shenzhen, China - In a study published in Cell Research, Chinese scientists from Zhejiang University and BGI have completed the genome sequencing and analysis of the endangered Chinese alligator (Alligator sinensis). This is the first published crocodilian genome, providing a good explanation of how terrestrial-style reptiles adapt to aquatic environments and temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD). The Chinese alligator is a member of the alligator family that lives in China. It is critically endangered with a population of ~100 wild and ~10,000 ...

A new treatment for children with brittle bone disease has been developed by the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Children's Hospital. The study of the new treatment for children with the fragile bone disease Osteogenesis Imperfecta was published this week in the world's leading general medical journal, The Lancet. This is the first study to clearly demonstrate that the use of the medicine risedronate can not only reduce the risk of fracture in children with brittle bones but also have rapid action - the curves for fracture risk begin to diverge after only 6 weeks ...

Chronic cocaine use may reduce the body's ability to store fat, new research from the University of Cambridge suggests. The scientists found that cocaine use may cause profound metabolic changes which can result in dramatic weight gain during recovery, a distressing phenomenon that can lead to relapse. It was previously widely believed that cocaine suppresses the appetite and that the problematic weight gain during rehabilitation was a result of patients substituting food for drugs. Dr Karen Ersche, from the Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute at the University ...

TORONTO -- Resolving complex ethical, social and cultural issues in the early stage of a global health research project or clinical trial can improve the impact and quality of that research, a new report says. The current practice for researchers is to seek approval for a study or trial from a research ethics board, usually at an academic institution, late in the process when many important decisions have already been made. But this can leave many complex and messy ethical, social and cultural issues on the table, according to Dr. Jim Lavery, a research scientist in the ...

Researchers at The Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, led by Dr. Ian S. Zagon, have discovered that a novel biological pathway, the OGF-OGFr axis, can be modulated in human triple-negative breast cancer cells to inhibit proliferation. According to BreastCancer.org 1 in 8 women in the U.S. will develop invasive breast cancer and more than 39,000 deaths occur annually. Approximately 15 to 20% of all breast cancers are designated as triple-negative meaning that the cancer cells lack estrogen and progesterone receptors, and do not overexpress human epidermal ...

WASHINGTON D.C. August 9, 2013 -- For most of us, a modern lifestyle without polymers is unthinkable…if only we knew what they were. The ordinary hardware-store terms we use for them include "plastics, polyethylene, epoxy resins, paints, adhesives, rubber" -- without ever recognizing the physical and chemical structures shared by this highly varied -- and talented -- family of engineering materials. Polymers increasingly form key components of electronic devices, too -- and with its ever-escalating pursuit of high efficiency and low cost, the electronics industry prizes ...

The process cells use to 'swallow' up nutrients, hormones and other signals from their environment – called endocytosis – can play a crucial role in shaping the cells themselves, scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, have found. The study, published today in Nature Communications, could help explain how the cells on your skin become different from those that line your stomach or intestine. "We're the first to show that endocytosis really drives changes in cell shape by directly remodelling the cell membrane," says Stefano ...

An evolutionary ecologist at the University of Southampton, is using 'grains of sand' to understand more about the process of evolution. Dr Thomas Ezard is using the fossils of microscopic aquatic creatures called planktonic foraminifera, often less than a millimetre in size, which can be found in all of the world's oceans. The remains of their shells now resemble grains of sand to the naked eye and date back hundreds of millions of years. A new paper by Dr Ezard, published today (9 August 2013) in the journal Methods in Ecology & Evolution, opens the debate on the best ...