Optical Boomerangs P. Aleahmad et al. Physical Review Letters (forthcoming) P. Zheng et al. Physical Review Letters, 109, 193901 (2012) Bending light around corners is usually done with mirrors, but now scientists have realized self-bending light beams that propagate along curved paths. Two independent groups have reported experiments on special light waves that can skid around curves. The researchers demonstrated that modified laser beams can be made to move along parabolic and elliptical paths. Furthermore, if obstacles are in their path, these beams can self-heal, ...

Different units can be used to describe product features, but what may seem a rather arbitrary choice may have profound consequences for consumer product evaluations, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. "Consumers find it easier to process information expressed in default units and attribute the positive feeling associated with easier understanding to the product itself," write authors Christophe Lembregts and Mario Pandelaere (both Ghent University). Would you evaluate a cell phone differently if its warranty was expressed in days instead ...

WASHINGTON — Legal responses to juvenile offending should be grounded in scientific knowledge about adolescent development and tailored to an individual offender's needs and social environment, says a new report from the National Research Council. Accountability practices should not be carried over from criminal courts to juvenile courts; in particular, confinement should be used only in rare circumstances such as when a youth poses a high risk of harming others. The specific aims of the juvenile justice system are to hold youths accountable for wrongdoing, prevent further ...

AUSTIN, Texas — University of Texas at Austin sociologist Chandra Muller and economist Sandra Black have received a $3.2 million grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to study the effects of cognition on health, mortality, education and employment from high school and beyond. The three-year grant will support a study, led by Muller, that follows 14,825 respondents (born in 1964-65) of the nationally representative "High School and Beyond" survey. Designed and funded by the U.S. Department of Education, the multiphase survey examines educational, vocational and personal ...

(Boston) – A new Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) study has found that improving Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination rates in black women may require culturally sensitive approaches that address ethnic-specific barriers. The findings are published online in the November/December issue of the journal, Women's Health Issues. According to the Centers for Disease Control, HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection. There are more than 40 HPV types that can infect the genital areas of males and females and in advanced stages, can cause cervical cancer. ...

Metal-binding agents rubbed into the skin, prescribed by some alternative practitioners for the treatment of autism, are not absorbed and therefore are unlikely to be effective at helping the body excrete excess mercury. The study by Jennifer Cohen and Michelle Ruha from Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center in the US, and their colleagues, provides evidence against the use of these treatments in children with autism. Their work is published online in Springer's Journal of Medical Toxicology. Metal-binding agents such as DMPS* have received significant attention in recent ...

Montreal, November 13, 2012 – The psychological scars of childhood abuse can last well into adulthood. New research from Concordia University shows the harm can have longterm negative physical effects, as well as emotional ones. Scientists hypothesize that stress in early childhood causes physiological changes that affect a victim's response to stress, which puts the individual at an increased risk of disease later in life. Jean-Philippe Gouin, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Chronic Stress and Health in Concordia's Department of Psychology, tested this link and ...

Many observational epidemiologic studies have found an inverse association between alcohol consumption and hematological cancers (such as lymphoma and leukemia). This study, based on the Million Women's Study in the UK, is large enough to permit an evaluation of associations with various types of such cancers. Further, it takes into account newer coding systems for morphology so that diseases associated with the lymphatic system can be separated from those of the myeloid system. The key findings are that alcohol consumption appears to lower the risk of several types ...

This press release is available in German. Blood vessels are extremely dynamic: depending on the external conditions, they can adapt their permeability for nutrients, their contractility, and even their shape. Unlike cardiac muscle cells, for example, the smooth muscle cells in blood vessels demonstrate a high degree of plasticity, so they can specialise or multiply as required, even repairing damage to the vessel wall. This vascular remodelling is evidently precisely regulated. Disruptions are extremely significant in conditions such as atherosclerosis or high blood ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA - Many species exhibit cooperative survival strategies — for example, sharing food or alerting other individuals when a predator is nearby. However, there are almost always freeloaders in the population who will take advantage of cooperators. This can be seen even among microbes such as yeast, where "cheaters" consume food produced by their neighbors without contributing any of their own. In light of this, evolutionary biologists have long wondered why cooperation remains a viable survival strategy, since there will always be others who cheat. Now, MIT physicists ...

AMHERST, Mass. – It may seem like common sense that the quality of online video streaming affects how willing viewers are to watch videos at a website. But until computer science researcher Ramesh Sitaraman at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and collaborators at Akamai developed a way to rigorously study the question, no one had been able to scientifically test the assumption. They conducted the first large-scale study of its kind to quantitatively demonstrate how video stream quality causes changes in viewer behavior. "Video stream quality is a very big topic ...

This press release is available in German. It is not always wise to form an alliance while in a conflict or at war, especially when there is something to be shared afterward. Economists from the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance have now shown by game theory experiments that, as soon as the enemy is gone, in-group solidarity of alliances vanishes rapidly. Former brothers in arms fight even more vigorously over the spoils of a victory than strangers do. During the conflict, they expend together only half the effort of their enemy. Furthermore, when ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – As the brain develops, each neuron must find its way to precisely the right spot to weave the intricate network of links the brain needs to function. Like the wiring in a computer, a few misplaced connections can throw off functioning for an entire segment of the brain. A new study by researchers at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine reveals how some nerve cells, called interneurons, navigate during the development of the cerebral cortex. Mutations in a key gene behind this navigation system underlie a rare neurological disorder called ...

Researchers using a new approach to identifying genes associated with depression have found that variants in a group of genes involved in transmission of signals by the neurotransmitter glutamate appear to increase the risk of depression. The report published in the journal Translational Psychiatry suggests that drugs targeting the glutamate system may help improve the limited success of treatment with current antidepressant drugs. "Instead of looking at DNA variations one at a time, we looked at grouping of genes in the same biological pathways and found that a set ...

This press release is available in Spanish. While one team of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists is testing the effectiveness of pesticides against mosquitoes, another group is learning how repellents work. At the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Center for Medical, Agricultural and Veterinary Entomology (CMAVE) in Gainesville, Fla., entomologist Sandra Allan is using toxic sugar-based baits to lure and kill mosquitoes. Allan and her CMAVE cooperators are evaluating insecticides and designing innovative technology to fight biting insects and arthropods. ...

1. Prophylactic Probiotics Reduce Clostridium difficile-associated Diarrhea in Patients Taking Antibiotics Prophylactic use of probiotics can reduce Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhea (CDAD). Clostridium difficile is a bacterium that can cause symptoms ranging from diarrhea to life-threatening inflammation of the colon. CDAD most commonly affects older adults in hospitals or in long term care facilities and typically occurs after use of antibiotics. Probiotics are microorganisms thought to counteract disturbances in intestinal flora, and thereby reduce the risk ...

52,000 More Primary Care Physicians Needed by 2025 to Meet Anticipated Demand Researchers project the United States will need 52,000 additional primary care physicians by 2025 — a 25 percent increase in the current workforce — to address the expected increases in demand due to population growth, aging, and insurance expansion following passage of the Affordable Care Act. Analyzing nationally representative data, the researchers conclude population growth will be the single greatest driver of increased primary care utilization, requiring approximately 33,000 additional ...

MINNEAPOLIS – A new study shows that people who have had a head injury and have lived or worked near areas where the pesticide paraquat was used may be three times more likely to develop Parkinson's disease. The study is published in the November 13, 2012, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Paraquat is a herbicide commonly used on crops to control weeds. It can be deadly to humans and animals. "While each of these two factors is associated with an increased risk of Parkinson's on their own, the combination is associated ...

Erosion caused by flowing water does not only smooth out objects, but can also form distinct shapes with sharp points and edges, a team of New York University researchers has found. Their findings, which appear in the latest edition of the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), reveal the unexpected ways that erosion can affect landscapes and artificial materials. The impact of erosion is widely recognized by environmentalists and geologists, but less clear is how nature's elements, notably water and air, work to shape land, rocks, and artificial ...

ANN ARBOR—At hospital shift changes, doctors and nurses exchange crucial information about the patients they're handing over—or at least they strive to. In reality, they might not spend enough time talking about the toughest cases, according to a study led by the University of Michigan. These quick but important handoff conversations can have a major effect on patient care in the early parts of a shift. More than a half billion of them happen in U.S. hospitals every year, and that number has substantially increased with enforcement of work-hour regulations. Studies have ...

Two studies published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Medicine examined the cost of delivering the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine to primary school girls in Tanzania. Both studies found that the cost of HPV vaccine delivery to adolescent girls may be substantially higher compared with the cost of delivering a new vaccine to an infant where the delivery schedule matches the existing infant immunization schedule. Cervical cancer is the second largest cancer-related killer of women in the world, with half a million new cases of cervical cancer worldwide ...

There are substantial inequalities in the stage at which cancer patients receive their diagnosis – a critical factor for cancer survival – a new study by the University of Cambridge reveals. The researchers found that age, sex and income as well as the type of cancer influenced the risk of a patient being diagnosed at an advanced stage of the disease. Eliminating these inequalities would help improve the chances of a cure for up to 5,600 patients with seven common cancers each year. The research was published today in the Annals of Oncology. The scientists studied ten ...

Tumor cells circulating in a patient's bloodstream can yield a great deal of information on how a tumor is responding to treatment and what drugs might be more effective against it. But first, these rare cells have to be captured and isolated from the many other cells found in a blood sample. Many scientists are now working on microfluidic devices that can isolate circulating tumor cells (CTCs), but most of these have two major limitations: It takes too long to process a sufficient amount of blood, and there is no good way to extract cancer cells for analysis after their ...

BOSTON, MA—A research team at Brigham and Women's Hospital has developed a novel device that may one day have broad therapeutic and diagnostic uses in the detection and capture of rare cell types, such as cancer cells, fetal cells, viruses and bacteria. The device is inspired by the long, elegant appendages of sea creatures, such as jellyfish and sea cucumbers. The study will be published online on November 12, 2012 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The device, a microchip, is inspired by a jellyfish's long, sticky tentacles that are used to capture ...

CHICAGO – Fasting prior to blood lipid tests appears to have limited association with lipid subclass levels, suggesting that fasting for routine lipid level determinations may be unnecessary, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. "Although current guidelines recommend measuring lipid levels in a fasting state, recent studies suggest that nonfasting lipid profiles change minimally in response to food intake and may be superior to fasting levels in predicting adverse cardiovascular outcomes," write Davinder ...