Mobile hand-held consumer electronic products have a rapid growing market today, witnessed by the popularity of Apple products. Most people make their first contact to internet, not by a PC, rather by a smart phone. The phone is no longer a phone, but it provides various functions for communication and for entertainment. Not only we can have recorded information such as books, images, songs, and movies from the phone or i-pad, but also we can have instant information such as traffic jam when we drive home, as well as breaking news at the last moment. It is expected that ...

LADA (latent autoimmune diabetes in adults) is a form of type 1 diabetes in adulthood. Like the childhood form, the insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas are destroyed by the body's own immune system. The progression of the illness is relatively slowly, however, with clinical manifestations not appearing until after the age of 30 and the patients not yet requiring insulin therapy to control blood sugar levels at the beginning of the disease. It is therefore often difficult to differentiate between LADA and type 2 diabetes. Scientists from the Institute of Diabetes ...

Who said that there is only sand in the deserts? Not quite desert roses, two new species of desert poppies from North America prove such statements wrong with their simple beauty. The newly described plants are found in the deserts of California and Arizona and have a vibrant yellow colored inflorescences, typical for all the desert dwellers from the Eschscholzia genus of the poppy family. The study was published in the open access journal PhytoKeys. Most commonly known for the iconic California Poppy, the state flower of California, Eschscholzia is a genus in the poppy ...

This news release is available in German. Halle, Germany/ Missoula, USA/ Berkeley, USA. In their joint publication in the journal „Ecology Letters" German and American biologists have reported an increase in biomass production in ecosystems colonised by non-native plant species. In the face of climate change, these and other changes to ecosystems are predicted to become more frequent, according to the researchers. All over the world, plant and animal species are increasingly encroaching upon ecosystems where they don't belong as a result of human influence. This ...

Cameras with hyperspectral sensors can observe far more than the human eye. Unlike the retina, which has only three color receptors (red, green and blue), these sensors can generate 130 different color values per pixel. Using this high-grade color resolution, an entire range of different materials can be differentiated impeccably – even if, at first glance, they appear the same to the human eye. This is because every substance has its own individual color spectrum, irrespective of how its surface reflects the light hitting it. This hyperspectral technology can be used anyplace ...

Computed tomography (CT) scans routinely taken to guide the treatment of pancreatic cancer may provide an important secondary benefit. According to new research from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, the scans also reflect how well chemotherapy will penetrate the tumor, predicting the effectiveness of treatment. The research, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, is the first human study to address the issue of chemotherapy delivery to pancreatic tumors, a problem previously shown in animal studies. "We found that the distribution of intravenous ...

Your answers on psychological questionnaires, including some of the ones that some employers give their employees, might have a distinct biological signature. New research indeed demonstrates overlap between what workers feel and what their bodies actually manifest. This is an important occupational health issue when we consider that workplace stress is the leading cause of sick leave related to depression and burnout. Involving over 400 workers from 35 businesses, the research was conducted by the researchers at the University of Montreal, its affiliated Institut universitaire ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new technique to fight crop insect pests may affect different insect populations differently, researchers report. They analyzed RNA interference (RNAi), a method that uses genetic material to "silence" specific genes – in this case genes known to give insect pests an advantage. The researchers found that western corn rootworm beetles that are already resistant to crop rotation are in some cases also less vulnerable to RNAi. The study is reported in the journal Pesticide Biochemistry and Physiology. "Our results indicate that the effectiveness of ...

PITTSBURGH—Too much garlic mustard in your neighborhood forest? Actually, the problem may be too many deer. A research team led by Susan Kalisz, professor of evolutionary ecology in the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Biological Sciences, published a paper online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that takes a long view on why invasive garlic mustard plants thrive to the detriment of native species. The study, initiated in 2003 at the Trillium Trail Nature Reserve in Fox Chapel, Pa., concludes that an overpopulation of deer (density ...

Worried that you could be in a car accident? Insurance company X can protect you and your family. Afraid you will lose your children to drunk driving? MADD can help you educate them to avoid drinking and driving. According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, when a person-to-person support system is not available in a fearful situation, brands can act as a replacement source of emotional attachment. "We look at how fear can impact evaluations of a new brand," write authors Lea Dunn and JoAndrea Hoegg (both University of British Columbia). "Our research ...

From a very young age, children are targeted with advertising messages that emphasize fun and happiness, especially for food products and toys. But what happens to these beliefs once the child is grown? According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, children develop brand loyalty and biases that carry over into their adult lives and are often difficult to change. "Our research provides an initial investigation into how exposure to ads in childhood can lead to enduring biases that favor products associated with the ads once the kids grow up," write authors ...

When it comes to shopping for gifts, we try to select things we think people both want and need. According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, focusing too much on the gift recipient can lead to giving the gift we were trying to avoid in the first place. "We predict that in a gift-giving situation, both the gift givers and gift receivers will focus on the gift receivers when thinking about the gift. Givers will choose gifts that are more desirable over gifts that are more practical, whereas receivers will give greater weight to the gift's practicality," ...

BATON ROUGE – New research finds face matching, as when customs agents check passports, to be incredibly fallible, with error rates between 10 and 20 percent under ideal, laboratory-induced conditions, and much worse in more realistic settings. "Because society relies on face perception and ID verification for many tasks, people are often under the impression that we are experts in this domain," said LSU Assistant Professor of Psychology Megan Papesh. "Our research shows the precise opposite." In a recent article published in Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics, ...

Patients who received help from a poison center had shorter hospital stays and lower hospital charges among those who are the most expensive to treat, according to a study led by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health. Poison centers provide 24-hour assistance year round to the public and to medical professionals. While studies show that poison centers reduce system-wide costs, their impact on patient outcomes at the hospital level has not been clear, the study's authors report. The researchers conducted a retrospective analysis ...

Organ-transplant recipients often reject donated organs, but a new, two-pronged strategy developed by UC San Francisco researchers to specifically weaken immune responses that target transplanted tissue has shown promise in controlled experiments on mice. The hope is that using this novel treatment strategy at the time of transplantation surgery could spare patients from lifelong immunosuppressive treatments and their side effects. The approach might also be used to treat autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes, the researchers said. The study is published and commented ...

Imagine that you are in a meeting with coworkers or at a gathering of friends. You pull out your cell phone to show a presentation or a video on YouTube. But you don't use the tiny screen; your phone projects a bright, clear image onto a wall or a big screen. Such a technology may be on its way, thanks to a new light-bending silicon chip developed by researchers at Caltech. The chip was developed by Ali Hajimiri, Thomas G. Myers Professor of Electrical Engineering, and researchers in his laboratory. The results were presented at the Optical Fiber Communication (OFC) conference ...

LOS ANGELES (March 10, 2014) – A team of researchers from the National Institutes of Health, Emory University and Cedars-Sinai – specialists in identifying and treating very rare diseases – used three innovative tools to detect a previously unknown gene mutation, test potential therapies in the lab, and initiate personalized drug treatment for a boy with a lifelong history of uncontrollable seizures that caused significant impact on his cognitive and social development. "This personalized medical approach exemplifies the power of current research tools and shows the immense ...

After hip replacement surgery, many patients are anxious to resume driving, and a new study challenges the conventional wisdom that patients should wait six weeks before getting back behind the wheel. Dr. Geoffrey Westrich, director of research, Adult Reconstruction and Joint Replacement at Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City, found that patients in the study were able to return to driving four weeks after total hip replacement. The study, titled, "A Novel Assessment of Driving Reaction Time Following THR Using a New Fully Interactive Driving Simulator," will ...

People who sustain the most common type of hip fracture, known as a femoral neck fracture, are at increased risk of complications. A special type of MRI developed at Hospital for Special Surgery in collaboration with GE Healthcare can show a detailed image following fracture repair, without the distortion caused by metal surgical screws that are problematic in standard MRIs. Each year, more than 340,000 people suffer a broken hip in the United States. The femoral neck, the area just below the ball of the hip's ball-and-socket joint, is the most common site of fracture, ...

Middle-aged women with rheumatoid arthritis or arthritis resulting from an injury are among the patients most likely to experience serious pain following a knee replacement, researchers from Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) in New York have found. One of the biggest concerns patients have is the amount of pain they will have after knee replacement surgery. Although it is a very successful operation overall to relieve arthritis pain and restore function, persistent postoperative pain can be a problem for some patients. Researchers at HSS set out to determine which groups ...

WASHINGTON – When it comes to helping young adults avoid serious health problems later in life, assessing their personalities during routine medical exams could prove as useful as recording their family medical histories and smoking habits, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. "Health care reform provides a great opportunity for preventive care, with physicians seeing more young adults who may not previously have had insurance," said lead author Salomon Israel, PhD, of Duke University and Duke University Medical Center. "Our research ...

Athens, Ga. – Although choosing to do something because the perceived benefit outweighs the financial cost is something people do daily, little is known about what happens in the brain when a person makes these kinds of decisions. Studying how these cost-benefit decisions are made when choosing to consume alcohol, University of Georgia associate professor of psychology James MacKillop identified distinct profiles of brain activity that are present when making these decisions. "We were interested in understanding how the brain makes decisions about drinking alcohol. Particularly, ...

BOSTON (March 11, 2014) — Traumatic brain injury is a risk factor for epilepsy, though the relationship is not understood. A new study in mice, published in Cerebral Cortex, identifies increased levels of a specific neurotransmitter as a contributing factor connecting traumatic brain injury (TBI) to post-traumatic epilepsy. The findings suggest that damage to brain cells called interneurons disrupts neurotransmitter levels and plays a role in the development of epilepsy after a traumatic brain injury. The research team, led by David Cantu and Chris Dulla, studied the ...

Melbourne scientists are a step closer to creating a new drug to stop a heart attack in its tracks and reduce the damage caused, without any side effects. The Monash University research, published today in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA (PNAS), offers new hope to thousands of people who experience heart attacks and heart failure – one of the major causes of death worldwide. Professors Arthur Christopoulos and Peter Scammells from the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS) led a team of scientists combining molecular pharmacology ...

Baboons learn from other baboons about new food sources – but only if they are bold or anxious – according to a new study published in the journal PeerJ). The results suggest that personality plays a key role in social learning in animals, something previously ignored in animal cognition studies. Studying animals at the Zoological Society of London's Institute of Zoology Tsaobis Baboon Project in Namibia, the researchers examined how personality influenced whether baboons solved foraging tasks and whether they then demonstrated to others how to solve the tasks. They found ...