Consumers engage in superstitious behavior when they want to achieve something but don't have the power to make it happen, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. "Preference for lucky products (those associated with positive outcomes) increases when a strong desire for control is combined with lower perceived ability to exert control. Consumers who make superstitious choices believe they will be effective in helping them achieve the desired outcome," write authors Eric J. Hamerman (Tulane University) and Gita V. Johar (Columbia University). Sports ...

Some targeted messages based on political orientation are more effective at persuading consumers to recycle, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. "Given the sharp differences in attitudes toward sustainability, surprisingly little attention has been paid to understanding how to appeal to differences in political orientation in order to influence recycling. Unique appeals targeted to liberals and conservatives may be more effective at getting them to adopt environmentally conscious behaviors," write authors Blair Kidwell (The Ohio State University), ...

Survey results may be biased in multilingual research if consumers are unfamiliar with translated terms, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. "Consumers are influenced by the specific labels used to mark the endpoints of a survey response scale. This is particularly important in multilingual research. If the response category labels used in different languages are not equivalent, this could bias survey results," write authors Bert Weijters, Maggie Geuens (both Ghent University and Vlerick Business School), and Hans Baumgartner (Pennsylvania State ...

New Rochelle, NY, May 14, 2013—Breastfeeding has a positive impact on the physical and mental development of infants. A new study suggests that breastfeeding may protect against the development of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) later in childhood. The study is reported in Breastfeeding Medicine, the Official Journal of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine, published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Breastfeeding Medicine website at http://www.liebertpub.com/bfm. A team of Israeli researchers led by Aviva Mimouni-Bloch, ...

The sun emitted a third significant solar flare in under 24 hours, peaking at 9:11 p.m. EDT on May 13, 2013. This flare is classified as an X3.2 flare. This is the strongest X-class flare of 2013 so far, surpassing in strength the two X-class flares that occurred earlier in the 24-hour period. The flare was also associated with a coronal mass ejection, or CME. The CME began at 9:30 p.m. EDT and was not Earth-directed. Experimental NASA research models show that the CME left the sun at approximately 1,400 miles per second, which is particularly fast for a CME. The models ...

The latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS') award-winning Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions podcast series describes the first mobile application to foster wider use of the environmentally friendly and sustainable principles of green chemistry. Based on a report by Sean Ekins, Ph.D., D.Sc., and colleagues in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, the new podcast is available without charge at iTunes and from http://www.acs.org/globalchallenges. Mention mobile applications, or mobile apps, and people think of games, email, news, weather, productivity ...

Androgen deprivation therapy is a common and effective treatment for advanced prostate cancer. However, among other side-effects, it can cause significant bone thinning in men on long-term treatment. A new study¹ by Vahakn Shahinian and Yong-Fang Kuo from the Universities of Michigan and Texas respectively, finds that although bone mineral density testing is carried out on some men receiving this therapy, it is not routine. They did note, however, that men were significantly more likely to be tested when they were being cared for by both a urologist and a primary care ...

Cancún, Mexico -- Researchers taking a new look at the snow and ice covering Mount Everest and the national park that surrounds it are finding abundant evidence that the world's tallest peak is shedding its frozen cloak. The scientists have also been studying temperature and precipitation trends in the area and found that the Everest region has been warming while snowfall has been declining since the early 1990s. Members of the team conducting these studies will present their findings on May 14 at the Meeting of the Americas in Cancun, Mexico - a scientific ...

TORONTO, May 14, 2013—A program co-led by St. Michael's Hospital could be the next widely used model to treat patients who are frequent users of the health care system and have severe addictions, often complicated by homelessness and mental health problems. The Toronto Community Addiction Team (TCAT) was developed to improve health and social outcomes for people with addictions who are frequent users of health services by providing one-on-one intensive case management from a harm reduction approach. The team works with clients to provide services such as individual therapy, ...

Tuesday 14th May, Washington DC - The commercial application of MEMS, or micro-electro-mechanical systems, will receive a major boost today following the presentation of a brand new way to accurately measure the power requirements and outputs of all existing and future devices. The cheap and easy to apply technique will be presented for the first time today at the TechConnect World Conference 2013 by a research team from Laboratoire national de métrologie et d'essais (LNE) in France. The researchers believe it will help manufacturers improve product performance, develop ...

DETROIT — A Wayne State University researcher understands that the three most important things about real estate also apply to small ground robotic vehicles: location, location, location. In a paper recently published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, Weisong Shi, Ph.D., associate professor of computer science in the College of Engineering, describes his development of a technique called LOBOT that provides accurate, real-time, 3-D positions in both indoor and outdoor environments. The project was supported in part by the Wayne State ...

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have helped identify many of the biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease that could potentially predict which patients will develop the disorder later in life. Now, studying spinal fluid samples and health data from 201 research participants at the Charles F. and Joanne Knight Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, the researchers have shown the markers are accurate predictors of Alzheimer's years before symptoms develop. "We wanted to see if one marker was better than the other in predicting which of our participants ...

It's a familiar scenario – a patient receives a medical implant and days later, the body attacks the artificial valve or device, causing complications to an already compromised system. Expensive, state-of-the-art medical devices and surgeries often are thwarted by the body's natural response to attack something in the tissue that appears foreign. Now, University of Washington engineers have demonstrated in mice a way to prevent this sort of response. Their findings were published online this week in the journal Nature Biotechnology. The UW researchers created a synthetic ...

PITTSBURGH—Alloys like bronze and steel have been transformational for centuries, yielding top-of-the-line machines necessary for industry. As scientists move toward nanotechnology, however, the focus has shifted toward creating alloys at the nanometer scale—producing materials with properties unlike their predecessors. Now, research at the University of Pittsburgh demonstrates that nanometer-scale alloys possess the ability to emit light so bright they could have potential applications in medicine. The findings have been published in the Journal of the American Chemical ...

The newest public health threat in Africa, scientists have found, is coming from a previously unknown source: the banded mongoose. Leptospirosis, the disease is called. And the banded mongoose carries it. Leptospirosis is the world's most common illness transmitted to humans by animals. It's a two-phase disease that begins with flu-like symptoms. If untreated, it can cause meningitis, liver damage, pulmonary hemorrhage, renal failure and death. "The problem in Botswana and much of Africa is that leptospirosis may remain unidentified in animal populations but contribute ...

The toxin that causes botulism is the most potent that we know of. Eating an amount of toxin just 1000th the weight of a grain of salt can be fatal, which is why so much effort has been put into keeping Clostridium botulinum, which produces the toxin, out of our food. The Institute of Food Research on the Norwich Research Park has been part of that effort through studying the bacteria and the way they survive, multiply and cause such harm. In new research, IFR scientists have been mining the genome of C. botulinum to uncover new information about the toxin genes. There ...

WASHINGTON -- Recent studies that examine links between sodium consumption and health outcomes support recommendations to lower sodium intake from the very high levels some Americans consume now, but evidence from these studies does not support reduction in sodium intake to below 2,300 mg per day, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine. Despite efforts over the past several decades to reduce dietary intake of sodium, a main component of table salt, the average American adult still consumes 3,400 mg or more of sodium a day – equivalent to about 1 ½ teaspoons ...

New research at The University of Nottingham is calling for changes to a government scheme which engages community nurses in the prevention of child abuse and neglect in the home as part of a maternal and child health care programme. The study, published online by the Journal of Public Health, has found that despite being set up to help reduce the numbers of child abuse cases, the £10 million Family Nurse Partnership will only be able to tackle around 10% of families involved in child maltreatment. And, the researchers say, by using different, less common risk factors ...

(Boston) – A new Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) study has found that low-income and minority parents may be more receptive to vaccinating their daughters against Human Papillomavirus (HPV), while white, middle-class parents are more likely to defer the vaccination. The findings appear online in the May issue of the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved. Cervical cancer incidence and mortality are markedly higher for low-income and minority women due to higher rates of HPV and limited access to screening and treatment. Vaccination for HPV has ...

Berkeley — Some racial groups are more likely to bear the brunt of extreme heat waves because of where they live, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. The findings, published today (Tuesday, May 14) in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, highlight racial disparities at a time when the frequency and intensity of extreme heat waves is expected to increase with climate change. Researchers used satellite imagery data to identify areas where there is no tree canopy to provide shade, and where half or more of the ...

Boston, MA, May 14, 2013—A new report assessing the economic viability of services provided by practicing midlevel dental providers in the U.S. shows that they are expanding preventive dental care to people who need it most: children and those who can't afford care. At the same time, they are providing that care at a reduced cost to the dental practice. The report, released today by Community Catalyst, determined that midlevel dental providers currently practicing in Alaska and Minnesota cost their employers 27 and 29 percent respectively of the revenue they generate. The ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Most consumers who are shopping for a new car depend on good crash safety ratings as an indicator of how well the car will perform in a crash. But a new University at Buffalo study of crashes involving cars and sport utility vehicles (SUVs) has found those crash ratings are a lot less relevant than vehicle type. The study is being presented May 16 at the annual meeting of the Society of Academic Emergency Medicine in Atlanta. In head-on collisions between passenger cars and SUVs, the UB researchers found that drivers in passenger cars were nearly 10 ...

KANSAS CITY, MO—A small ensemble of musicians can produce an infinite number of melodies, harmonies and rhythms. So too, do a handful of workhorse signaling pathways that interact to construct multiple structures that comprise the vertebrate body. In fact, crosstalk between two of those pathways—those governed by proteins known as Notch and BMP (for Bone Morphogenetic Protein) receptors—occurs over and over in processes as diverse as forming a tooth, sculpting a heart valve and building a brain. A new study by Stowers Institute for Medical Research Investigator Ting ...

1. U.S. Should Maintain a 'High Level of Alert and Preparedness' for Chinese Avian Flu The United States should maintain a high level of alert and preparedness for influenza A (H7N9), as its global pandemic potential is still unknown. In March, Chinese public health officials notified the World Health Organization that an avian influenza virus that had never before been detected in humans had infected three adults, resulting in critical illness. Since then, more than 100 people have been infected, and 24 have died. About a fifth of those who have been infected are still ...

San Francisco, CA (May 13, 2013) – Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that conserving rainforests in the Amazon River Basin will increase the amount of electricity that hydropower projects in the area can produce. The study is the first to quantify the impact of regional rainforest cover on energy production. Its findings reveal that rainforests are more critical than previously thought in generating the rainfall that drives river flow, and ultimately power production, in tropical areas. The research shows that if deforestation ...