Consumers choose lower-priced products and are more satisfied with their purchase when products are organized by benefits instead of features, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. "It matters whether products are organized by features or benefits. Simply changing the way the same set of products is organized impacts how consumers process information and make choices," write authors Cait Poynor Lamberton (University of Pittsburgh) and Kristin Diehl (University of Southern California). Consumers frequently shop for products that have been organized ...

Whether a person believes obesity is caused by overeating or by a lack of exercise predicts his or her actual body mass, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Obesity has become a pressing public health issue in recent years, with two-thirds of U.S. adults classified as overweight or obese and similar trends unfolding in many developed nations. Researchers Brent McFerran of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and Anirban Mukhopadhyay of Hong Kong University of Science ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Kids whose moms encourage them to exercise and eat well, and model those healthy behaviors themselves, are more likely to be active and healthy eaters, according to researchers at Duke Medicine. Their findings, published online in the International Journal of Obesity on June 18, 2013, remind parents that they are role models for their children, and underscore the importance of parental policies promoting physical activity and healthy eating. Exercise and healthy diets are critical in fighting childhood obesity, a considerable problem in the United States, ...

Scientists are scrambling to gather data for the FDA to support the need for a blood test to diagnose brain injury in the United States. The University of Rochester Medical Center just added significant evidence by reporting in the Journal of Neurotrauma that it might be clinically useful to measure two brain biomarkers instead of one. Jeffrey J. Bazarian, M.D., M.P.H., an associate professor of Emergency Medicine at URMC, believes he's the first to show that measuring a combination of two proteins released into the bloodstream after a head injury might be the best way ...

Irvine, Calif., June 18, 2013 — The herbal extract of a yellow-flowered mountain plant long used for stress relief was found to increase the lifespan of fruit fly populations by an average of 24 percent, according to UC Irvine researchers. But it's how Rhodiola rosea, also known as golden root, did this that grabbed the attention of study leaders Mahtab Jafari and Sam Schriner. They discovered that Rhodiola works in a manner completely unrelated to dietary restriction and affects different molecular pathways. This is significant, said Jafari, associate professor of ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Researchers conclude in a new report that a global push for small hydropower projects, supported by various nations and also the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, may cause unanticipated and potentially significant losses of habitat and biodiversity. An underlying assumption that small hydropower systems pose fewer ecological concerns than large dams is not universally valid, scientists said in the report. A five-year study, one of the first of its type, concluded that for certain environmental impacts the cumulative damage caused by ...

NEW YORK (June 18, 2013)-- An international team of investigators co-led by Weill Cornell Medical College is offering a new framework for evidence-based surgery and device research, similar to the kind of risk and benefit analysis used in evidence-based medicine. "Currently, there is no dynamic research framework to systematically detect devices and surgeries that don't offer any benefits to patients or may even be harmful," says co-lead investigator Dr. Art Sedrakyan of Weill Cornell Medical College. In the June 18 issue of the British Medical Journal (BMJ), Dr. Sedrakyan ...

Chicago (June 18, 2013): With Medicare penalties on hospitals with higher-than-expected rates of 30-day readmissions expected to rise in 2014, more hospitals are evaluating the most accurate methods for tracking readmissions of patients. A new study appearing in the June issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons finds that the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program® (ACS NSQIP®) led to more accurate data tracking than another popular database, the University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC), for tracking 30-day hospital readmissions ...

DALLAS – June 18, 2013 – Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of aortic atherosclerosis can predict the risk of heart attacks and other cardiovascular events in otherwise healthy individuals, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found. The investigation, published in the June issue of Radiology, is the first large-scale study to evaluate the predictive value of MRI measures of aortic atherosclerosis for future cardiac events. Using MRI, researchers at UT Southwestern were able to measure in thousands of participants very subtle but highly significant differences ...

For less than $100, University of Washington researchers have designed a computer-interfaced drawing pad that helps scientists see inside the brains of children with learning disabilities while they read and write. The device and research using it to study the brain patterns of children will be presented June 18 at the Organization for Human Brain Mapping meeting in Seattle. A paper describing the tool, developed by the UW's Center on Human Development and Disability, was published this spring in Sensors, an online open-access journal. "Scientists needed a tool that allows ...

A new study confirms directly what scientists previously knew only indirectly: The poisonous "rotten egg" gas hydrogen sulfide is generated by our body's growing cells. Hydrogen sulfide, or H2S, is normally toxic, but in small amounts it plays a role in cardiovascular health. In the new study, chemists developed a chemical probe that reacts and lights up when live human cells generate hydrogen sulfide, says chemist Alexander R. Lippert, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. The discovery allows researchers to observe the process through a microscope. The researchers ...

President Obama officially declared June as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month. However, despite advances in civil rights, sexual minority youth are still at greater risk for suicide than their heterosexual peers, according to the Suicide Prevention Resource Center. A University of Missouri psychology graduate student recently published recommendation to improve psychologists' treatment of sexual minority youth, which could help improve psychological functioning and reduce depression and suicide rates. "Psychologists sometimes face a particular ...

STANFORD, Calif. - In autism, brain regions tailored to respond to voices are poorly connected to reward-processing circuits, according to a new study by scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The research could help explain why children with autism struggle to grasp the social and emotional aspects of human speech. "Weak brain connectivity may impede children with autism from experiencing speech as pleasurable," said Vinod Menon, PhD, senior author of the study, which will be published online June 17 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ...

Blind people sometimes develop the amazing ability to perceive the contours of the room they're in based only on auditory information. Bats and dolphins use the same echolocation technique for navigating in their environment. At EPFL, a team from the Audiovisual Communications Laboratory (LCAV), under the direction of Professor Martin Vetterli, has developed a computer algorithm that can accomplish this from a sound that's picked up by four microphones. Their experiment is being published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). "Our software ...

The average salt content of packaged bread sold in the UK has fallen by 20 per cent over the past decade. But salt levels still vary widely, indicating that further targets are required, finds research published in the online only journal BMJ Open. Bread is the biggest contributor of dietary salt in the UK, providing almost a fifth of the total derived from processed foods. The recommended daily intake for UK adults is a maximum of 6 g, with the current average 8.1 g a day. Excess dietary salt can lead to high blood pressure, and an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, ...

Moderate drinking during pregnancy - 3 to 7 glasses of alcohol a week - does not seem to harm fetal neurodevelopment, as indicated by the child's ability to balance, suggests a large study published in the online only journal BMJ Open. But social advantage may be a factor, as more affluent and better educated mums-to-be tend to drink more than women who are less well off, say the researchers. The researchers assessed the ability to balance - an indicator of prenatal neurodevelopment - of almost 7000 ten year olds who were part of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents ...

The elderly may benefit from implantable cardioverter defibrillators as much as younger people, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Circulation. An implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) is a small battery-powered device placed under the skin of the chest which delivers electrical impulses to restore a normal heartbeat if it detects a dangerous abnormal rhythm. Overall health — not age alone — should determine how well patients will do after getting an ICD and help guide decisions about who should receive one, researchers said. "Whether ...

Eating more red meat over time is associated with an increased risk of type-2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in a follow-up of three studies of about 149,000 U.S. men and women, according to a report published Online First by JAMA Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. Red meat consumption has been consistently related to an increased risk of T2DM, but previous studies measured red meat consumption at a baseline with limited follow-up information. However, a person's eating behavior changes over time and measurement of consumption at a single point in time does not ...

Age disparities exist in the continuum of care for patients with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) with people younger than 45 years less likely to be aware of their infection or to have a suppressed viral load, according to a report published Online First by JAMA Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. Early diagnosis, prompt and sustained care, and antiretroviral therapy (ART) are associated with reduced morbidity, mortality and further transmission of the virus. However, of the more than 1.1 million people living with HIV, more than 200,000 are unaware ...

Hispanic preschoolers, children and adolescents viewed, on average about 12 foods ads per day on television in 2010, with the majority of these ads appearing on English-language TV, whereas fast-food represented a higher proportion of the food ads on Spanish-language television, according to a study published Online First by JAMA Pediatrics, a JAMA Network publication. High obesity rates among young people is a public health concern in the United States and exposure to large numbers of advertisements for food products with little or no nutritional value likely contributes ...

Differences in parental beliefs and attitudes regarding the effects of media on early childhood development may help explain increasing racial/ethnic disparities in child media viewing/habits, according to a study by Wanjiku F. M. Njoroge, M.D., of Seattle Children's Hospital and the University of Washington, Seattle, and colleagues. (Online First) A total of 596 parents of children ages 3 to 5 years completed demographic questionnaires, reported on attitudes regarding media's risks and benefits to their children, and completed one-week media diaries in which they recorded ...

The lipidation states (or modifications) in certain proteins in the brain that are related to the development of Alzheimer disease appear to differ depending on genotype and cognitive diseases, and levels of these protein and peptides appear to be influenced by diet, according to a report published Online First by JAMA Neurology, a JAMA Network publication. Sporadic Alzheimer disease (AD) is caused in part by the accumulation of β-amyloid (Αβ) peptides in the brain. These peptides can be bound to lipids or lipid carrier proteins, such as apolipoprotein ...

Sustainability programs are a Goldilocks proposition – some groups are too big, some are too small, and the environment benefits when the size of a group of people working to save it is just right. It has long been debated how many people working together can change the world. Whether it's joining forces to conserve gas, save a forest or stave off climate change, arguments have been made for the power of a dedicated few or the strength of numbers. It also has been a mystery what tips a group dynamic from powerful to unproductive. Scientists at Michigan State University ...

RSV is a common cause of respiratory infection, but there is no vaccine available. It causes flu-like symptoms in healthy adults, but becomes life-threatening in young children and the elderly. It is estimated to cause over 100 000 deaths yearly worldwide. The teams of Research Director Sarah Butcher (Institute of Biotechnology, University of Helsinki) and Professor Ari Helenius (ETH Zurich) have now solved the three-dimensional structure of RSV. "The structural model helps us to understand how infectious viruses are formed. This information can be useful in the intelligent ...

Using drugs to treat an infection could allow other co-existing conditions to flourish, a study in wild animals has shown. Researchers studying wild mice – which typically carry multiple parasitic infections at once – found that when these animals were treated for one type of bug, other infections they had tended to worsen. The findings suggest that infections that co-exist in our bodies can compete with each other to alter disease. Treating one infection may have unintended consequences by enabling others to gain a stronger foothold – perhaps to the overall detriment ...