While Mexico and the United States have ramped up their efforts to control and perhaps defeat Mexico's increasingly violent drug cartels, the outcome of these efforts remains in doubt and no panaceas are in sight, but prohibition has once again proved to be a failure, according to a paper from Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. The paper by Rice sociologist William Martin, "Cartels, Corruption and Carnage in the Calderón Era," traces the origins and growth of Mexican drug cartels and the corruption, failed government policies and gruesome violence ...

The European Alps range span eight countries from France to Slovenia and harbour an extraordinary diversity of habitats, plants and animals, including many species found nowhere else. They are widely considered to be one of the most important regions for the preservation of biodiversity in Europe. But the Alps are not just a natural paradise: they are the home and workplace of up to 14 million people and the destination for more than 100 million tourists each year. The resulting changes to the landscape have led to an increasing fragmentation of the plant and animal ...

DENVER – Recent studies have demonstrated that molecular-targeted agents, such as epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI), may prolong survival of selected patients based on tumor biomarkers. The presence of mutation in the EGFR gene is known as a predictive marker for the response to treatment. However, whether or not these EGFR mutations are prognostic factors for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has not been known. A recent study published in the February 2013 issue of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer's (IASLC) ...

DENVER – Exon 20 insertions are the third most common family of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations found in non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Little is known about cancers harboring these mutations aside from their lack of response to EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors, impairing the development of effective targeted therapies. A recent study published in the February 2013 issue of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer's (IASLC) Journal of Thoracic Oncology, concludes that patients with EGFR exon 20 insertions have similar clinical characteristics ...

DENVER – For patients with medically operable clinical stage I non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), lobectomy or pneumonectomy is the standard approach. For patients with medically inoperable stage I NSCLC, stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) has become a standard of care. Researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine wanted to compare the patterns of failure (primary tumor control, local control, regional control, and distant control) between each method. A recent study published in the February 2013 issue of the International Association for the Study ...

Materialistic consumers may derive more pleasure from desiring products than they do from actually owning them, and are willing to overspend and go into debt because they believe that future purchases will transform their lives, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. "Thinking about acquisition provides momentary happiness boosts to materialistic people, and because they tend to think about acquisition a lot, such thoughts have the potential to provide frequent mood boosts. But the positive emotions associated with acquisition are short-lived. Although ...

Consumers systematically mispredict both the selling and purchase prices of other consumers due to a lack of cognitive and emotional connection, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. "As sellers, consumers fail to appreciate the extent to which endowment and the prospect of giving up an object and not getting to enjoy its benefits influence other owner valuations. On the other hand, as buyers, consumers fail to realize the extent to which lack of ownership and the prospect of giving up money to purchase an object impact other buyer valuations," ...

The Internet has given consumers the unprecedented opportunity to reach a mass audience and thereby advance their social position through displays of good taste, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. "Ordinary consumers were previously limited to sharing their views and tastes within their circle of friends and acquaintances, and only media professionals and others in powerful positions could reach a mass audience. But the Internet has made it possible for ordinary consumers to reach a mass audience or 'grab hold of the megaphone' through blogs, ...

Feeling socially isolated causes consumers to pursue riskier but potentially more profitable financial opportunities, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. "Seeking social acceptance and maintaining close relationships are among the most fundamental and universal human needs. Consumers are often willing to invest or sacrifice important resources to secure social bonds. In the absence of social support, consumers seek significantly more money to secure what they want out of the social system surrounding them. Feeling socially rejected triggers riskier ...

Family interaction and everyday activity strongly influence how television advertisements are experienced and interpreted at home, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. "It is common to link advertising viewing at home to increased levels of materialism and domestic tension stemming from 'pester power' (children getting parents to buy something by asking for it repeatedly until they get it). While these are serious issues, we have found that creative and skilled viewers of television advertising in the family living room can overturn and personalize ...

Be it triumph or crushing defeat, exhilaration or agony, body language more accurately conveys intense emotions, according to recent research that challenges the predominance of facial expressions as an indicator of how a person feels. Princeton University researchers report in the journal Science that facial expressions can be ambiguous and subjective when viewed independently. The researchers asked study participants to determine from photographs if people were experiencing feelings such as loss, victory or pain from facial expressions or body language alone, or from ...

This press release is available in French. Quebec City, January 15, 2013—A team of researchers from Université Laval, CHU de Québec, and pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has discovered a way to stimulate the brain's natural defense mechanisms in people with Alzheimer's disease. This major breakthrough, details of which are presented today in an early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), opens the door to the development of a treatment for Alzheimer's disease and a vaccine to prevent the illness. One of the main characteristics ...

Toronto, January 15, 2013 –The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and Big Brothers Big Sisters Canada (BBBSC) are releasing the first results of one of the largest mentoring studies ever conducted. The five-year study, which tracks the experiences of almost 1,000 children and teenagers registered with Big Brothers Big Sisters agencies across Canada, found that those with a mentor are significantly more confident in their academic abilities and considerably less likely to display behavioural problems. One stand out finding is that girls in the study with ...

New research suggests that commonly observed differences in how groups perceive racism may be explained by ignorance about — and even denial of — the extent of racism over the course of history. The research, conducted by psychological scientists at the University of Kansas and Texas A&M University, indicates that African Americans had more accurate knowledge of historically documented racism compared to European Americans. This difference in historical knowledge partially accounted for group differences in perceptions of racism, both at a systemic and an incident-specific ...

Salmon runs are notoriously variable: strong one year, and weak the next. New research shows that the same may be true from one century to the next. Scientists in the past 20 years have recognized that salmon stocks vary not only year to year, but also on decades-long time cycles. One example is the 30-year to 80-year booms and busts in salmon runs in Alaska and on the West Coast driven by the climate pattern known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Now work led by University of Washington researchers reveals those decadal cycles may overlay even more important, centuries-long ...

PHILADELPHIA, PA (January 14, 2013)—Shutting down a specific pathway in cancer cells appears to improve the ability of common drugs to wipe those cells out, according to new research from scientists at Fox Chase Cancer Center, published in the January issue of Cancer Discovery. "Ideally, this research will eventually enable scientists to find drugs that disrupt this pathway and boost the impact of current therapies," says Igor Astsaturov, MD, PhD, Attending Physician in the Department of Medical Oncology at Fox Chase. "That's the long-term plan." The new approach appears ...

In a small study, researchers reported increased healthy tissue growth after surgical repair of damaged cartilage if they put a "hydrogel" scaffolding into the wound to support and nourish the healing process. The squishy hydrogel material was implanted in 15 patients during standard microfracture surgery, in which tiny holes are punched in a bone near the injured cartilage. The holes stimulate patients' own specialized stem cells to emerge from bone marrow and grow new cartilage atop the bone. Results of the study, published in the Jan. 9 issue of Science Translational ...

Washington, D.C. – Quitting smoking is a common New Year's resolution for Americans each year, but research has repeatedly shown it is not an easy task. Some groups, such as racial/ethnic minorities, have an even harder time quitting. New research suggests hard-hitting graphic tobacco warnings may help smokers of diverse backgrounds who are struggling to quit. A new study by researchers at Legacy® and Harvard School of Public Health provides further evidence that bold pictorial cigarette warning labels that visually depict the health consequences of smoking — such as those ...

The following highlights summarize research papers that have been recently published in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), Journal of Geophysical Research – Oceans (JGR-C), Journal of Geophysical Research-Biogeosciences (JGR-G) and Water Resources Research. In this release: 1. Seabird activity influences Arctic methane and nitrous oxide emissions 2. U.S. cities less susceptible to water scarcity than previously thought 3. First direct evidence that breaking waves cause horizontal eddies 4. Variability of transparent organic particles in Arctic floodplain lakes 5. ...

RICHMOND, Va. (Jan. 14, 2013) – Patients who undergo knee replacement surgery may be at risk of gaining more weight than their peers who have not had the surgery, according to a five-year study led by a Virginia Commonwealth University professor. Daniel Riddle, Ph.D., professor in the VCU Department of Physical Therapy in the School of Allied Health Professions, and his research team reviewed the medical records of nearly 1,000 knee-replacement surgery patients from the Mayo Clinic Health System and found that 30 percent of them gained 5 percent or more of their body ...

In the face of hard times, which strategy gives us the best shot at survival: saving for the future or spending resources on immediate gains? The answer may depend on the economic conditions we faced in childhood, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Drawing on life history theory, Vladas Griskevicius of the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management and colleagues hypothesized that the strategy a person takes when times are tight may be determined, at least in part, by features ...

Archaeologists working at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama have discovered a cluster of 12 unusual stones in the back of a small, prehistoric rock-shelter near the town of Boquete. The cache represents the earliest material evidence of shamanistic practice in lower Central America. Ruth Dickau, Leverhulme Post-doctoral Fellow at the University of Exeter in England, unearthed the cache of stones in the Casita de Piedra rock-shelter in 2007. A piece of charcoal found directly underneath the cache was radiocarbon dated to 4,800 years ago. A second fragment ...

WHAT: Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) have found that an experimental vaccine elicits antibodies that can protect nonhuman primates from Ebola virus infection. Ebola virus causes severe hemorrhagic fever in humans and nonhuman primates, meaning that infection may lead to shock, bleeding and multi-organ failure. According to the World Health Organization, Ebola hemorrhagic fever has a fatality rate of up to 90 percent. There is no licensed treatment or vaccine for Ebola virus infection. Several research ...

An effort to develop software that unravels the complexities of how proteins fold is paying dividends in new findings on how they misfold, according to researchers at Rice University. The study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by chemist Peter Wolynes and his team at Rice's BioScience Research Collaborative should be of particular interest to those who probe the roots of degenerative diseases associated with the aggregation of amyloid fibers in the body. These include Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases and Type 2 diabetes. The ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Eating diets high in sugar and fat may not affect the health outcomes of older adults ages 75 and up, suggesting that placing people of such advanced age on overly restrictive diets to treat their excess weight or other conditions may have little benefit, according to researchers at Penn State and Geisinger Healthcare System. "Historically people thought of older persons as tiny and frail," said Gordon Jensen, head of the Department of Nutritional Sciences at Penn State, "but that paradigm has changed for many older persons. Currently, 30 percent ...