Philadelphia, Pa. (May 16, 2013) – Like the general public, health care professionals may hold certain stereotypes regarding sexual activity and childbearing among women with disabilities. But a new study finds that women with chronic physical disabilities are about as likely as nondisabled women to say they are currently pregnant, after age and other sociodemographic factors are taken into account. The findings are reported in the June issue of Medical Care, published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. Health care professionals can expect—and ...

"Spring is like a perhaps hand," wrote the poet E. E. Cummings: "carefully / moving a perhaps / fraction of flower here placing / an inch of air there... / without breaking anything." With the hand of nature trained on a beaker of chemical fluid, the most delicate flower structures have been formed in a Harvard laboratory—and not at the scale of inches, but microns. These minuscule sculptures, curved and delicate, don't resemble the cubic or jagged forms normally associated with crystals, though that's what they are. Rather, fields of carnations and marigolds seem to ...

In the wake of the sobering news that atmospheric carbon dioxide is now at its highest level in at least three million years, an important advance in the race to develop carbon-neutral renewable energy sources has been achieved. Scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have reported the first fully integrated nanosystem for artificial photosynthesis. While "artificial leaf" is the popular term for such a system, the key to this success was an "artificial forest." "Similar to the chloroplasts in green plants ...

Philadelphia, PA— The answer is yes, according to a paper in the SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics. In a paper published in the journal last month, authors Anthony Bonato, Dieter Mitsche, and Pawel Pralat describe a mathematical model to disrupt flow of information in a complex real-world network, such as a terrorist organization, using minimal resources. Terror networks are comparable in their structure to hierarchical organization in companies and certain online social networks, where information flows in one direction from a source, which produces the information ...

Northwestern University scientists have shown a gene involved in neurodegenerative disease also plays a critical role in the proper function of the circadian clock. In a study of the common fruit fly, the researchers found the gene, called Ataxin-2, keeps the clock responsible for sleeping and waking on a 24-hour rhythm. Without the gene, the rhythm of the fruit fly's sleep-wake cycle is disturbed, making waking up on a regular schedule difficult for the fly. The discovery is particularly interesting because mutations in the human Ataxin-2 gene are known to cause ...

HOUSTON ­­– African-American adults living closer to a fast food restaurant had a higher body mass index (BMI) than those who lived further away from fast food, according to researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and this association was particularly strong among those with a lower income. A new study published online in the American Journal of Public Health indicates higher BMI associates with residential proximity to a fast food restaurant, and among lower-income African-Americans, the density, or number, of fast food restaurants within two ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– When UC Santa Barbara doctoral student Seeta Sistla and her adviser, environmental studies professor Josh Schimel, went north not long ago to study how long-term warming in the Arctic affects carbon storage, they had made certain assumptions. "We expected that because of the long-term warming, we would have lost carbon stored in the soil to the atmosphere," said Schimel. The gradual warming, he explained, would accelerate decomposition on the upper layers of what would have previously been frozen or near-frozen earth, releasing the greenhouse ...

Whether we're listening to Bach or the blues, our brains are wired to make music-color connections depending on how the melodies make us feel, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley. For instance, Mozart's jaunty Flute Concerto No. 1 in G major is most often associated with bright yellow and orange, whereas his dour Requiem in D minor is more likely to be linked to dark, bluish gray. Moreover, people in both the United States and Mexico linked the same pieces of classical orchestral music with the same colors. This suggests that humans ...

In today's virtual world, it's easy to downplay the significance of place. Yet when it comes to regional prosperity, geography matters. Income and job growth is not random but rather spill over from one region to another, meaning that merely being next to a prosperous region will make your own economy more vibrant. This may sound like a no-brainer, but until recently it's been hard to prove from a statistical perspective. Yet by using new models that factor in location and blending microeconomic ideas with macro ones, researchers at the Edward Lowe Foundation's Institute ...

Frustration led to revelation when Rice University scientists determined how graphene might be made useful for high-capacity batteries. Calculations by the Rice lab of theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson found a graphene/boron anode should be able to hold a lot of lithium and perform at a proper voltage for use in lithium-ion batteries. The discovery appears in the American Chemical Society's Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. The possibilities offered by graphene get clearer by the day as labs around the world grow and test the one-atom-thick form of carbon. Because ...

A new tool being developed by UT Arlington assistant professor of physics could help scientists map and track the interactions between neurons inside different areas of the brain. The journal Optics Letters recently published a paper by Samarendra Mohanty on the development of a fiber-optic, two-photon, optogenetic stimulator and its use on human cells in a laboratory. The tiny tool builds on Mohanty's previous discovery that near-infrared light can be used to stimulate a light-sensitive protein introduced into living cells and neurons in the brain. This new method could ...

City College of New York Assistant Professor of Physics Cory Dean, who recently arrived from Columbia University where he was a post-doctoral researcher, and research teams from Columbia and three other institutions have definitively proven the existence of an effect known as Hofstadter's Butterfly. The phenomenon, a complex pattern of the energy states of electrons that resembles a butterfly, has appeared in physics textbooks as a theoretical concept of quantum mechanics for nearly 40 years. However, it had never been directly observed until now. Confirming its existence ...

RENO, Nev. – A new window into the nature of the universe may be possible with a device proposed by scientists at the University of Nevada, Reno and Stanford University that would detect elusive gravity waves from the other end of the cosmos. Their paper describing the device and process was published in the prestigious physics journal Physical Review Letters. "Gravitational waves represent one of the missing pieces of Einstein's theory of general relativity," Andrew Geraci, University of Nevada, Reno physics assistant professor, said. "While there is a global effort ...

A new study of glaciers worldwide using observations from two NASA satellites has helped resolve differences in estimates of how fast glaciers are disappearing and contributing to sea level rise. The new research found glaciers outside of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, repositories of 1 percent of all land ice, lost an average of 571 trillion pounds (259 trillion kilograms) of mass every year during the six-year study period, making the oceans rise 0.03 inches (0.7 mm) per year. This is equal to about 30 percent of the total observed global sea level rise during ...

The distortion of the ancient shoreline and flooding surface of the U.S. Atlantic Coastal Plain are the direct result of fluctuations in topography in the region and could have implications on understanding long-term climate change, according to a new study. Sedimentary rocks from Virginia through Florida show marine flooding during the mid-Pliocene Epoch, which correlates to approximately 4 million years ago. Several wave-cut scarps, (rock exposures) which originally would have been horizontal, are now draped over a warped surface with up to 60 meters variation. Nathan ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Graphene has dazzled scientists, ever since its discovery more than a decade ago, with its unequalled electronic properties, its strength and its light weight. But one long-sought goal has proved elusive: how to engineer into graphene a property called a band gap, which would be necessary to use the material to make transistors and other electronic devices. Now, new findings by researchers at MIT are a major step toward making graphene with this coveted property. The work could also lead to revisions in some theoretical predictions in graphene physics. The ...

NASA's TRMM satellite identified areas of heavy rainfall as Cyclone Mahasen made landfall today, May 16, in southern Bangladesh. NASA's Aqua satellite also captured an image of the storm and showed the extent of Cyclone Mahasen's clouds over three countries. When NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite passed over Cyclone Mahasen on May 16 at 0406 UTC (12:04 a.m. EDT), the TRMM Microwave imager showed the heaviest rainfall was occurring in a band of thunderstorms north of the center of circulation. That band of thunderstorms was already over southern ...

NASA's Aqua satellite and NOAA's GOES-15 satellite captured imagery of the Eastern Pacific Ocean's first named tropical storm, Alvin. Aqua and GOES-15 provided imagery of Alvin that provided a look at the overall storm and the temperatures of its cloud tops. NASA's Aqua satellite flew over Tropical Storm Alvin just as it reached tropical storm status on May 15 at 2047 UTC (4:47 p.m. EDT). The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument that flies aboard Aqua captured an infrared image of the storm that showed bands of thunderstorms on the tropical storm's western side ...

Earthquakes, tsunamis, and other natural disasters often showcase the worst in human suffering – especially when those disasters strike populations who live in rapidly growing communities in the developing world with poorly enforced or non-existent building codes. This week in Cancun, a researcher from Yale-National University of Singapore (NUS) College in Singapore is presenting a comparison between large-scale earthquakes and tsunamis in different parts of the world, illustrating how nearly identical natural disasters can play out very differently depending on where ...

Cincinnati, OH, May 17, 2013 -- Levels of physical inactivity and obesity are very high in children, with fewer than 50% of primary school-aged boys and fewer than 28% of girls meeting the minimum levels of physical activity required to maintain health. Exergaming, using active console video games that track player movement to control the game (e.g., Xbox-Kinect, Wii), has become popular, and may provide an alternative form of exercise to counteract sedentary behaviors. In a study scheduled for publication in The Journal of Pediatrics, researchers studied the effects ...

Researchers from Moffitt Cancer Center and the University of South Florida have evaluated how Florida health care and social service agencies distribute "Libres para Siempre" ("Forever Free®"), a Spanish smoking relapse prevention booklet series. Their analysis found that 10 agencies distributed the booklets actively and passively, but those methods may not have helped the material reach its intended audience, Spanish-speaking smokers who have quit but are at risk for relapse. Their study appeared in a March issue of the Journal of Cancer Education. "Previous research ...

Immigration and children: An exploration of paths to citizenship Article provided by Vickerstaff Law Office, PSC Visit us at http://www.vickerstafflaw.com President Barack Obama has stated that immigration reform is a top priority during his second term in office. One piece of legislation that may be under consideration is the DREAM Act. This law caters specifically to youth who have lived in the United States for most of their lives, but entered as illegal immigrants. If this law passes, it would allow a pathway to conditional citizenship for these young immigrants. Illegal ...

Missouri traffic deaths up in 2012, mirroring nationwide trend Article provided by Weber Law Firm, L.C. Visit us at http://www.stcharlescaraccidentattorney.com/ Traffic safety and law enforcement officials in Missouri have long been focused on keeping the state's roads safe for motorists and pedestrians alike. Unfortunately, their efforts have not been as productive as some might hope. According to data from the Missouri Highway Patrol, there were 818 traffic accident fatalities on Missouri roadways. This is a significant increase from the 786 traffic accident ...

Three Nevada residents indicted for mortgage-lending fraud Article provided by Sprenz & Associates, P.C. Visit us at http://www.sprenzlaw.com Among today's crimes, mortgage and foreclosure rescue scams continue to be a common threat to those suffering in the current economy. This is because people will do almost anything to keep their homes. As Americans continue to struggle financially, they often become vulnerable to fraudulent ploys. Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto reports that three Nevada residents have recently been indicted by a grand ...

Faulty products in the home can cause personal injury Article provided by The Ritchie Law Firm Visit us at http://www.ritchieautoinjurylaw.com One's home is a place where they typically feel the safest. This, however, may not be the case if the home contains a faulty or dangerous product. Faulty products may result in injury and can make an individual's home a hazardous place. These products may range from a toy that is too small resulting in a child's choking to a toaster oven that has an electrical short and starts on fire. It is essential for the consumer ...