To expedite long lunch lines and enable cleaner accounting, about 80 percent of schools use debit cards or accounts that parents can add money to for cafeteria lunch transactions, write David Just and Brian Wansink, professors at the Cornell Center for Behavioral Economics in Child Nutrition Programs. "There may be a reason for concern about the popularity of cashless systems," say the researchers. "Debit cards have been shown to induce more frivolous purchases or greater overall spending." Just and Wansink compared purchases at school cafeterias that use debit-only systems ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Researchers exploring the link between newborn infections and later behavior and movement problems have found that inflammation in the brain keeps cells from accessing iron that they need to perform a critical role in brain development. Specific cells in the brain need iron to produce the white matter that ensures efficient communication among cells in the central nervous system. White matter refers to white-colored bundles of myelin, a protective coating on the axons that project from the main body of a brain cell. The scientists induced a mild E. ...

Lessons from underground nuclear tests and explosive volcanoes may hold the answer to how a category of unusual impact craters formed on Mars. The craters feature a thin outer deposit that extends many times beyond the typical range of ejecta, said Nadine Barlow, professor of physics and astronomy at Northern Arizona University. She has called these craters Low-Aspect-Ratio Layered Ejecta (LARLE) craters since the ratio of the thickness to the length of the deposit (the aspect ratio) is so small. Barlow presented the findings of her LARLE crater study at the American ...

Being able to provide high-quality health care is a primary driver of job satisfaction among physicians, and obstacles to quality patient care are a source of stress for doctors, according to a new RAND Corporation study. While physicians note some advantages of electronic health records, physicians complain that the systems in use today are cumbersome to operate and are an important contributor to their dissatisfaction, the study found. The findings suggest that the factors contributing to physician dissatisfaction could serve as early warnings of deeper quality problems ...

Feeding a growing global population while also slowing or reversing global deforestation may only be possible if agricultural yields rise and/or per capita food consumption declines over the next century, according to historic global food consumption and land use trends. Published October 9, 2013, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Chris Pagnutti, Chris Bauch, and Madhur Anand from the University of Guelph, this research underscores the long-term challenge of feeding everyone while still conserving natural habitat. To predict future global forest trends, the scientists ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- Parents who physically abuse their children appear to have a physiological response that subsequently triggers more harsh parenting when they attempt parenting in warm, positive ways, according to new research. Reporting in the quarterly journal Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice, a five-member team, led by Elizabeth A. Skowron, a professor in the Department of Counseling Psychology and Human Services in the University of Oregon College of Education, documented connections between the nervous system's ability to calm heart rate -- via ...

Ants and bees are surprisingly more genetically related to each other than they are to social wasps such as yellow jackets and paper wasps, a team of University of California, Davis, scientists has discovered. The groundbreaking research is available online and will be published Oct. 21 in the print version of the journal Current Biology. Using state-of-the-art genome sequencing and bioinformatics, the researchers resolved a long-standing, unanswered evolutionary question. Scientists previously thought that ants and bees were more distantly related, with ants being closer ...

In a breakthrough for understanding brain evolution, neuroscientists have shown that differences between primate brains - from the tiny marmoset to human – can be largely explained as consequences of the same genetic program. In research published in the Journal of Neuroscience, Professor Marcello Rosa and his team at Monash University's School of Biomedical Sciences and colleagues at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, used computer modelling to demonstrate that the substantial enlargement of some areas of the human brain, vital to advanced cognition, ...

Ulsan, S. Korea, Oct. 7 – A new wideband ring voltage-controlled oscillator (VOC)* was proposed by UNIST undergraduate student, Seyeon Yoo with the the research work published in IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters. *VCO (voltage-controlled oscillator) : an electronic oscillator whose oscillation frequency is controlled by a voltage input. The applied input voltage determines the instantaneous oscillation frequency. Wideband VCO is a key component of an IR-UWB system (Impulse radio-Ultra-wideband) which has drawn attention as a practical technology for a ...

The same process that allows water to trickle through coffee grinds to create your morning espresso may have played a key role in the formation of the early Earth and influenced its internal organization, according to a new study by scientists at Stanford's School of Earth Sciences. The finding, published in the current issue of the journal Nature Geoscience, lends credence to a theory first proposed nearly half a century ago suggesting that Earth's iron-rich core and layered internal structure might have formed in a series of steps that took place over millions of years ...

Researchers link decreased estrogen-related receptor activity to eating disorder predisposition Eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are considered to be the result of genetic predisposition and environmental risk factors. Despite eating disorders being common to families, no definitive genetic basis for disease predisposition has been identified. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Michael Lutter and colleagues at the University of Iowa identified genetic mutations in two separate families affected by eating disorders that ...

Eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are considered to be the result of genetic predisposition and environmental risk factors. Despite eating disorders being common to families, no definitive genetic basis for disease predisposition has been identified. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Michael Lutter and colleagues at the University of Iowa identified genetic mutations in two separate families affected by eating disorders that were linked to the same transcriptional pathway. The researchers determined that a mutation ...

Lumbar disc degeneration (LDD) is characterized by pain in the lumbar region of the spine as a result of a compromised disc. LDD is fairly common and thought to be the result of both environmental and genetic risk factors; however, the genetic factors that promote LDD are largely unknown. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Danny Chan and colleagues at the University of Hong Kong found mutations that reduced production of carbohydrate sulfotransferase 3 (CHST3) were associated with early-onset LDD. Mutations in families with LDD were mapped to the ...

Charlottesville, VA (October 8, 2013). Researchers found a significant reduction in the number of deaths of patients hospitalized in New York State with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) between 2001 and 2009. The Brain Trauma Foundation, in collaboration with the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, published the first edition of the "Guidelines for Management of Severe Traumatic Brain Injury" in 1986. Data from 22 trauma centers in New York State were studied by researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College, the Brain Trauma Foundation, and Jamaica Hospital ...

WASHINGTON, DC -- Approximately one in five Medicare patients are rehospitalized within 30 days of discharge.* The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) considers this rate excessive, and began reducing payments to hospitals that have excessive readmission rates in October 2012 under a provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. While the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program penalizes readmission to any hospital, most hospitals are only tracking same-hospital readmissions using administrative data that is recorded for billing purposes. However, ...

WASHINGTON, DC—The chance of ending up in a nursing facility appears to be significantly lower for older patients who undergo a laparoscopic procedure than for those who have open surgical resection for colon cancer, according to a study presented during a scientific poster session at the 2013 Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons. Investigators from Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, found that selected patients over the age of 70 were more likely to be discharged to their own homes—instead of a nursing facility—following laparoscopic operations ...

WASHINGTON, DC—New combinations of postoperative pain treatment decreased both pain and the use of narcotic pain relievers according to two studies presented this week at the 2013 Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons. One pain treatment utilized the simple but nonstandard application of ice packs after major abdominal operations in patients, and the other treatment was a prolonged drug delivery method using nanotechnology in animals. Past research has shown that postoperative pain is often undertreated.* The standard pain treatment after most major operations ...

Eating disorders like anorexia nervosa and bulimia often run in families, but identifying specific genes that increase a person's risk for these complex disorders has proved difficult. Now scientists from the University of Iowa and University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center have discovered -- by studying the genetics of two families severely affected by eating disorders -- two gene mutations, one in each family, that are associated with increased risk of developing eating disorders. Moreover, the new study shows that the two genes interact in the same signaling ...

Over 80% of the world's ice-free land is at risk of profound ecosystem transformation by 2100, a new study reveals. "Essentially, we would be leaving the world as we know it," says Sebastian Ostberg of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany. Ostberg and collaborators studied the critical impacts of climate change on landscapes and have now published their results in Earth System Dynamics, an open access journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU). The researchers state in the article that "nearly no area of the world is free" from the risk of climate ...

This is shown by complementary studies now published by scientists of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). "We managed to quantify a number of crucial impacts of climate change on the global land area," says Dieter Gerten, lead-author of one of the studies. Mean global warming of 2 degrees, the target set by the international community, is projected to expose an additional 8 percent of humankind to new or increased water scarcity. 3.5 degrees – likely to occur if national emissions reductions remain at currently pledged levels – would affect 11 percent ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Scientists report in Nature Communications that they have engineered yeast to consume acetic acid, a previously unwanted byproduct of the process of converting plant leaves, stems and other tissues into biofuels. The innovation increases ethanol yield from lignocellulosic sources by about 10 percent. Lignocellulose is the fibrous material that makes up the structural tissues of plants. It is one of the most abundant raw materials on the planet and, because it is rich in carbon it is an attractive source of renewable biomass for biofuels production. The ...

Turning to the Internet to find out what ails you is common, but for folks who have trouble handling uncertainty, "cyberchondria" – the online counterpart to hypochondria – worsens as they seek answers, a Baylor University researcher says. "If I'm someone who doesn't like uncertainty, I may become more anxious, search further, monitor my body more, go to the doctor more frequently — and the more you search, the more you consider the possibilities," said Thomas Fergus, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience in Baylor's College of Arts & Sciences. "If ...

Bruno Mourvillier, M.D., of the Université Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Paris, and colleagues conducted a study to examine whether treatment with hypothermia would improve the functional outcome of comatose patients with bacterial meningitis compared with standard care. Among adults with bacterial meningitis, the death rate and frequency of neurologic complications are high, indicating the need for new therapeutic approaches. Clinical trials of patients with trauma who were treated with hypothermia have shown a decrease of intracranial pressure, suggesting a potential ...

PULLMAN, Wash.—Using Montana's fast-growing Flathead County as a template, a Washington State University researcher has found that moderately restrictive land-use policies can significantly curb the potential damage of rural wildfires. However, highly restrictive planning laws will not do much more. "Effective land-use planning can reduce wildfire risk," says Travis Paveglio, a clinical assistant professor in the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication whose research focuses on wildfire, environmental hazards and natural resource management. "However, it's one of a suite ...

Bacterial cells use an impressive range of strategies to grow, develop and sustain themselves. Despite their tiny size, these specialized machines interact with one another in intricate ways. In new research conducted at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute, Jonathan Badalamenti, César Torres and Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown explore the relationships of two important bacterial forms, demonstrating their ability to produce electricity by coordinating their metabolic activities. In a pair of papers recently appearing in the journal Biotechnology and Bioengineering, ...