Overprecision — excessive confidence in the accuracy of our beliefs — can have profound consequences, inflating investors' valuation of their investments, leading physicians to gravitate too quickly to a diagnosis, even making people intolerant of dissenting views. Now, new research confirms that overprecision is a common and robust form of overconfidence driven, at least in part, by excessive certainty in the accuracy of our judgments. The research, conducted by researchers Albert Mannes of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Don Moore of the Haas ...

The mechanism responsible for generating part of the skeletal support for the membrane in animal cells is not yet clearly understood. Now, Jean-François Joanny from the Physico Chemistry Curie Unit at the Curie Institute in Paris and colleagues have found that a well-defined layer beneath the cell outer membrane forms beyond a certain critical level of stress generated by motor proteins within the cellular system. These findings, which offer a new understanding of the formation of this so-called cortical layer, have just been published in EPJ E. Active gels are ideal ...

It's not hard to tell the difference between the "charge" of a battery and criminal "charges." But for computers, distinguishing between the various meanings of a word is difficult. For more than 50 years, linguists and computer scientists have tried to get computers to understand human language by programming semantics as software. Driven initially by efforts to translate Russian scientific texts during the Cold War (and more recently by the value of information retrieval and data analysis tools), these efforts have met with mixed success. IBM's Jeopardy-winning Watson ...

DARIEN, IL – A new study suggests that frequent binge drinking is associated with insomnia symptoms in older adults. Results show that overall, 26.2 percent of participants had two or less binge drinking days per week, on average, and 3.1 percent had more than two days per week, on average. After adjustment for demographic variables, medical conditions, and elevated depressive symptoms, participants who binged on an average of more than two days a week had an 84 percent greater odds of reporting an insomnia symptom compared to non-binge drinkers. "It was somewhat surprising ...

PITTSBURGH—Diabetes patients often receive their diagnosis after a series of glucose-related blood tests in hospital settings, and then have to monitor their condition daily through expensive, invasive methods. But what if diabetes could be diagnosed and monitored through cheaper, noninvasive methods? Chemists at the University of Pittsburgh have demonstrated a sensor technology that could significantly simplify the diagnosis and monitoring of diabetes through breath analysis alone. Their findings were published in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Chemical ...

PITTSBURGH—A 350-year-old mathematical mystery could lead toward a better understanding of medical conditions like epilepsy or even the behavior of predator-prey systems in the wild, University of Pittsburgh researchers report. The mystery dates back to 1665, when Dutch mathematician, astronomer, and physicist Christiaan Huygens, inventor of the pendulum clock, first observed that two pendulum clocks mounted together could swing in opposite directions. The cause was tiny vibrations in the beam caused by both clocks, affecting their motions. The effect, now referred ...

Bethesda, MD (June 10, 2013) — The current standard practice of screening adolescents who are either symptomatic or at high-risk for celiac disease proves to be more cost-effective than universal screening. Additionally, the strategy is successful in preventing bone loss and fractures in celiac patients, according to a new study in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the official clinical practice journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. As many as 70 percent of untreated celiac patients experience decreased bone mineral density, which can lead ...

Over 100 years ago psychologist Carl Gustav Jung penned his theory of 'complexes' where he explained how unconscious psychological issues can be triggered by people, events, or Jung believed, through word association tests. New research in the Journal of Analytical Psychology is the first to reveal how modern brain function technology allows us to see inside the mind as a 'hot button' word triggers a state of internal conflict between the left and right parts of the brain. The study revealed that some words trigger a subconscious internal conflict between our sense ...

There's trouble ahead for the whitebark pine, a mountain tree that's integral to wildlife and water resources in the western United States and Canada. Over the last decade, some populations of whitebark pines have declined by more than 90 percent. But these declines may be just the beginning. New research results, supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and published today in the Journal of Ecology, suggest that as pine stands are increasingly fragmented by widespread tree death, surviving trees may be hindered in their ability to produce their usually abundant ...

Baltimore, MD – June 10, 2013 – In the largest study of its kind, physicians from the Department of Surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) have determined that outcomes for traumatic injury in patients with organ transplants are not worse than for non-transplanted patients, despite common presumptions among physicians. The findings, published in the June 2013 issue of The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, also show that transplanted organs are rarely ...

HOUSTON – (June 10, 2013) – Scientists at Rice University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have advanced on the goal of two-dimensional electronics with a method to control the growth of uniform atomic layers of molybdenum disulfide (MDS). MDS, a semiconductor, is one of a trilogy of materials needed to make functioning 2-D electronic components. They may someday be the basis for the manufacture of devices so small they would be invisible to the naked eye. The work appears online this week in Nature Materials. The Rice labs of lead investigator Jun Lou, Pulickel ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio—New technology under development at The Ohio State University is paving the way for low-cost electronic devices that work in direct contact with living tissue inside the body. The first planned use of the technology is a sensor that will detect the very early stages of organ transplant rejection. Paul Berger, professor of electrical and computer engineering and physics at Ohio State, explained that one barrier to the development of implantable sensors is that most existing electronics are based on silicon, and electrolytes in the body interfere with the ...

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Ames Laboratory have discovered a new family of rare-earth quasicrystals using an algorithm they developed to help pinpoint them. Quasicrystalline materials may be found close to crystalline phases that contain similar atomic motifs, called crystalline approximants. And just like fishing experts know that casting a line in the right habitat hooks the big catch, the scientists used their knowledge to hone in on just the right spot for new quasicrystal materials discovery. Their research resulted in finding the only known ...

VIDEO: This animation of GOES-14 satellite data from Saturday, June 8, through Monday, June 10 at 7:31 a.m. EDT shows Post-Tropical Storm Andrea's movement. On June 8, Andrea was centered off... Click here for more information. Post-Tropical cyclone Andrea's remnants sped into the North Atlantic Ocean over the weekend of June 8 and 9. NOAA's GOES-14 satellite data was used to create an animation of imagery that showed Andrea's movement from off the Maine coast through Atlantic ...

Arlington, Va. (June 10, 2013) – Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is one of the most frequent healthcare-associated infections found in intensive-care units (ICUs). New research on the prevalence of VAP in community hospitals shows small hospitals (less than 30,000 patient-days/year) have a higher rate of VAP than their larger counterparts, despite less use of ventilators. The study, published in the July issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, compares outcomes of patients on ventilators ...

With the daily mean concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide having reached 400 parts-per-million for the first time in human history, the need for carbon-neutral alternatives to fossil fuel energy has never been more compelling. With enough energy in one hour's worth of global sunlight to meet all human needs for a year, solar technologies are an ideal solution. However, a major challenge is to develop efficient ways to convert solar energy into electrochemical energy on a massive-scale. A key to meeting this challenge may lie in the ability to test such energy conversion ...

This news release is available in German. Perennial plants flower only when they have reached a certain age and been subjected to the cold. These two circumstances prevent the plant from starting to flower during winter. George Coupland and his fellow scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne have now discovered that the Alpine rock cress determines its age based on the quantity of a short ribonucleic acid. Perennial plants carefully balance periods of growth and flowering to ensure that they can live for many years. They do ...

Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center have determined that chronic myeloid leukemia patients who are treated with a class of oral chemotherapy drugs known as a tyrosine kinase inhibitors have significant side effects and quality-of-life issues that need to be addressed. Some of these issues include depression, fatigue, nausea and change of appearance. The researchers say it is important to improve the patients' quality of life because most will take tyrosine kinase inhibitors for the rest of their lives. Their study appeared in the April issue of Supportive Care in Cancer. "Although ...

Analysis of the damage shows numerous characteristics that are common with a recently identified pathology of tooth enamel that affects roughly 18% of children between the ages of 6 and 8. These results have been published in the American Journal of Pathology. Bisphenol A (BPA) is a chemical compound used in the composition of plastics and resins. It is used for example to manufacture food containers such as bottles or babies' bottles. It is also used for the protective films inside drinks cans and food tins, or as developers on sales receipts. Significant amounts of ...

A study in Schizophrenia Bulletin is among the first to indicate epigenetic changes related to immune function in schizophrenia. DNA methylation, a process involving the addition of a methyl group to the DNA without changing its sequence, can alter gene expression. Led by Dr. Jingyu Liu, the nine researchers analyzed and verified changes in DNA methylation patterns in people with and without schizophrenia and found significant changes in seven genes that moderate immune responses. In the current study, the researchers found that the seven genes that were up or down ...

Tropical Storm Yagi developed over the weekend of June 8 and 9 in the Western North Pacific from Tropical Depression 03W and NASA satellites captured the storm coming together. NASA's TRMM satellite measured rainfall rates within the storm and found the heaviest rain falling mostly south of the center. NASA and the Japanese Space Agency's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite captured the rate rain was falling within Tropical Storm Yagi on June 10 at 8:19 a.m. EDT. The heaviest rain was falling south of the center around the center of circulation at as ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – June 10, 2013 – Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center doctors have found that using stress cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging in an Emergency Department observation unit to care for patients with acute chest pain is a win-win – for the patient and the institution. In a small, single-center clinical trial, Chadwick Miller, M.D., M.S., and colleagues found that evaluating older, more complex patients in the observation unit with stress cardiac MRI, as opposed to usual inpatient care, reduced hospital readmissions, coronary revascularization procedures ...

Irvine, Calif., June 10, 2013 – The least massive galaxy in the known universe has been measured by UC Irvine scientists, clocking in at just 1,000 or so stars with a bit of dark matter holding them together. The findings, made with the world's most powerful telescopes at the W. M. Keck Observatory and published today in The Astrophysical Journal, offer tantalizing clues about how iron, carbon and other elements key to human life originally formed. But the size and weight of Segue 2, as the star body is called, are its most extraordinary aspects. "Finding a galaxy as ...

Bacteria in the gut that are under attack by antibiotics have allies no one had anticipated, a team of Wyss Institute scientists has found. Gut viruses that usually commandeer the bacteria, it turns out, enable them to survive the antibiotic onslaught, most likely by handing them genes that help them withstand the drug. What's more, the gut viruses, called bacteriophage or simply phage, deliver genes that help the bacteria to survive not just the antibiotic they've been exposed to, but other types of antibiotics as well, the scientists reported online June 9 in Nature. ...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—June 9, 2013—Scientists at the Gladstone Institutes have deciphered how a protein called Arc regulates the activity of neurons—providing much-needed clues into the brain's ability to form long-lasting memories. These findings, reported today in Nature Neuroscience, also offer newfound understanding as to what goes on at the molecular level when this process becomes disrupted. Led by Gladstone Senior Investigator Steve Finkbeiner, MD, PhD, this research delved deep into the inner workings of synapses. Synapses are the highly specialized junctions that ...