The prevalence of tobacco smuggling in Europe is lower than industry figures suggest, reveals the largest study of its kind, published online in Tobacco Control. Significantly, it is availability, rather than price, that seems to determine the level of illicit trade, the research suggests a finding that runs directly counter to the arguments proffered by the tobacco industry say the authors.They base their findings on a representative population sample of 1000 people from each of 18 European countries: Albania; Austria; Bulgaria; Czech Republic; Croatia; England; Finland; ...

Feeling lonely, as distinct from being/living alone, is linked to an increased risk of developing dementia in later life, indicates research published online in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. Various factors are known to be linked to the development of Alzheimer's disease, including older age, underlying medical conditions, genes, impaired cognition, and depression, say the authors. But the potential impacts of loneliness and social isolation—defined as living alone, not having a partner/spouse, and having few friends and social interactions — ...

STANFORD, Calif. — Efforts to help overweight patients avoid diabetes through lifestyle changes need not rely on intensive, one-on-one focused programs, a new clinical study from the Stanford University School of Medicine and the Palo Alto Medical Foundation Research Institute has found. The study, to be published Dec. 10 in the Archives of Internal Medicine, opens up a practical way for primary care physicians to help their patients at high risk for developing diabetes. Researchers have known for 10 years that intensive intervention programs led by lifestyle coaches ...

Patients with terminal cancer who viewed a three-minute video demonstrating cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) were less likely to indicate a preference for receiving CPR in the event of an in-hospital cardiac arrest than were patients who only listened to a verbal description of the procedure. The study that will appear in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and is being released online today is a follow-up to a smaller, 2009 study and includes a more diverse group of patients with many forms of cancer. "It really is incumbent on us, as physicians, to help our patients ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Anyone unfortunate enough to encounter a porcupine's quills knows that once they go in, they are extremely difficult to remove. Researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women's Hospital now hope to exploit the porcupine quill's unique properties to develop new types of adhesives, needles and other medical devices. In a new study, the researchers characterized, for the first time, the forces needed for quills to enter and exit the skin. They also created artificial devices with the same mechanical features as the quills, raising the possibility of designing ...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Researchers at Mayo Clinic in Florida have uncovered a toxic cellular process by which a protein that maintains the health of neurons becomes deficient and can lead to dementia. The findings shed new light on the link between culprits implicated in two devastating neurological diseases: END ...

ATLANTA – December 10, 2012—A new American Cancer Society study finds a strong inverse association between caffeinated coffee intake and oral/pharyngeal cancer mortality. The authors say people who drank more than four cups of caffeinated coffee per day were at about half the risk of death of these often fatal cancers compared to those who only occasionally or who never drank coffee. The study is published online in the American Journal of Epidemiology. The authors say more research is needed to elucidate the biologic mechanisms that could be at work. Previous epidemiologic ...

Afraid to commit to a relationship? According to new research from Tel Aviv University, it could be just one more thing to blame on your parents. A study of the romantic history of 58 adults aged 22-28 found that those who avoid committed romantic relationships are likely a product of unresponsive or over-intrusive parenting, says Dr. Sharon Dekel, a psychologist and researcher at the Bob Shappell School of Social Work. Dr. Dekel and her fellow researcher, Prof. Barry Farber of Columbia University, found that 22.4 percent of study participants could be categorized ...

A decade ago, a British philosopher put forth the notion that the universe we live in might in fact be a computer simulation run by our descendants. While that seems far-fetched, perhaps even incomprehensible, a team of physicists at the University of Washington has come up with a potential test to see if the idea holds water. The concept that current humanity could possibly be living in a computer simulation comes from a 2003 paper published in Philosophical Quarterly by Nick Bostrom, a philosophy professor at the University of Oxford. In the paper, he argued that ...

Liposarcoma, the most common type of sarcoma, is an often lethal form of cancer that develops in fat cells. It is particularly deadly, in part, because the tumors are not consistently visible with positron emission tomography (PET) scans that use a common probe called FDG and because they frequently do not respond to chemotherapy. Now, using a strategy that tracks cancer cells' consumption of nucleosides, a team of researchers at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Center has identified a group of liposarcoma tumors that can be imaged by PET scanning using a tracer substance ...

Rockville, MD — Better strategies are needed to help glaucoma patients cope with difficulty reading. According to a new scientific study published in Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, adults with glaucoma read slower when reading silently for long periods of time and are more likely to have their reading speed decrease over time, possibly a result of reading fatigue. Technological solutions such as e-readers – and the many apps being created for them – could help. "Right now, so many products are available for presenting reading material in a variety of formats," ...

WASHINGTON—In the summer of 1854 a doctor named John Snow tracked London's deadly outbreak of cholera to contaminated water coming from a public well—the now famous Broad Street pump. But Snow's observations had to wend their way through the annals of science and took years to make an impact on the public health. Now, more than a century later, ordinary people can go online and report observations about public health problems and disasters in real time. In a just-published study a researcher at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services ...

A medication being tested to help smokers kick the habit also may help avoid the weight gain that is common after quitting but only in women, according to a study published in the December issue of Biological Psychiatry. This is the first medication shown to reduce weight gain for up to one year in women smokers who quit. Naltrexone — an opioid blocker that can dampen the desire for alcohol, heroin and nicotine, as well as the pleasures of eating — helped men quit smoking. It improved their quit rates after three months of treatment in a large controlled trial, from 17 ...

PASADENA, Calif.—A secret agent is racing against time. He knows a bomb is nearby. He rounds a corner, spots a pile of suspicious boxes in the alleyway, and pulls out his cell phone. As he scans it over the packages, their contents appear onscreen. In the nick of time, his handy smartphone application reveals an explosive device, and the agent saves the day. Sound far-fetched? In fact it is a real possibility, thanks to tiny inexpensive silicon microchips developed by a pair of electrical engineers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The chips generate ...

ATLANTA – Auditory systems differ between sexes in sparrows depending on the season, a Georgia State University neuroscientist has found. The work adds to our knowledge of how the parts of the nervous system, including that of humans, are able to change. Megan Gall, a post-doctoral researcher with Georgia State's Neuroscience Institute, tested the peripheral auditory systems of male and female house sparrows, comparing the hearing of each gender during non-breeding seasons and breeding seasons. Gall measured frequency selectivity – the ability to tell sounds that are ...

KINGSTON, R.I.— December 10, 2012 – A University of Rhode Island researcher has discovered that the weight-loss drug orlistat, known by the brand names Xenical and Alli, inhibits a key enzyme that may lead to "severe toxicity of internal organs such as the liver and kidney." The inhibition is irreversible and can be caused by a low level of the drug. Professor Bingfang Yan's study funded by the National Institutes of Health, also found that the drug alters efficacy of medicines, and particularly limits the effectiveness of some anti-cancer drugs. Part of the research ...

NEW YORK (Dec. 10, 2012) -- Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is the most common subtype of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and the seventh most frequently diagnosed cancer. The most chemotherapy resistant form of DLBCL, called activated B-cell – DLBCL (ABC-DLBCL), remains a major therapeutic challenge. An international research team, led by two laboratories from Weill Cornell Medical College, has developed a new experimental drug therapy to target this aggressive form of lymphoma. In the journal Cancer Cell, researchers report the discovery of an experimental small molecule ...

URBANA – Every year farmers spend a lot of money trying to control corn rootworm larvae, which are a significant threat to maize production in the United States and, more recently, in Europe. University of Illinois researchers have been working on validating a model for estimating damage functions. Nicholas Tinsley, a doctoral candidate in crop sciences, has refined a model developed in 2009 by researchers at the University of Wisconsin and in Brescia, Italy, to describe the relationship between root injury caused by these pests and yield loss. He used the equivalent ...

DETROIT - Both nature and nurture appear to be significant factors in early antisocial behaviors of adopted children, a Wayne State University researcher believes. Christopher Trentacosta, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, recently examined data from 361 linked triads (birth mother, adoptive parents, adopted child) in order to assess externalizing behavioral problems such as aggression and defiance when children were 18, 27 and 54 months of age. The triads were part of the Early Growth and Development Study (EGDS), ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The small kerosene lamps that light millions of homes in developing countries have a dark side: black carbon – fine particles of soot released into the atmosphere. New measurements show that kerosene wick lamps release 20 times more black carbon than previously thought, say researchers at the University of Illinois and the University of California, Berkeley. The group published its findings in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. Black carbon is a hazard for human health and the environment, affecting air quality both indoors and out. ...

Young patients with an aggressive form of leukemia who are likely to relapse after chemotherapy treatment can significantly reduce those odds by receiving additional courses of chemotherapy, suggest the findings of a clinical trial led by investigators at Dana-Farber/Children's Hospital Cancer Center in Boston. The trial leaders will present the results of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute ALL Consortium study, which involved nearly 500 patients under age 18 with B-precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL), at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology ...

Over past decades, many areas of the forested Amazon basin have become a patchwork of farms, pastures and second-growth forest as people have moved in and cleared land--but now many are moving out, in search of economic opportunities in newly booming Amazonian cities. The resulting depopulation of rural areas, along with spreading road networks and increased drought are causing more and bigger fires to ravage vast stretches, say researchers in a new study. The study, focusing on the Peruvian Amazon, is the latest to suggest that land-use changes and other factors, including ...

Blood levels of an immunity-related protein, galectin-1, in patients with newly diagnosed Hodgkin lymphoma reflected the extent of their cancer and correlated with other predictors of outcome, scientists reported at the American Society of Hematology annual meeting. In a study of 315 patients from a German database, researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute found that serum galectin-1 levels "are significantly associated with tumor burden and additional adverse clinical characteristics in newly diagnosed Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) patients." The measurements were made ...

When it comes to climate change, deforestation and toxic waste, the assumption has been that conservative views on these topics are intractable. But new research from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that such viewpoints can be changed after all, when the messages about the need to be better stewards of the land are couched in terms of fending off threats to the "purity" and "sanctity" of Earth and our bodies. A UC Berkeley study has found that while people who identified themselves as conservatives tend to be less concerned about the environment than ...

Violent acts in James Bond films were more than twice as common in Quantum of Solace (2008) than in the original 1962 movie Dr No, researchers from New Zealand's University of Otago have found. The researchers analysed 22 official franchise films, which span 46 years, to test the hypothesis that popular movies are becoming more violent (The latest Bond film, Skyfall, was not included as it was unreleased at the time of the study). They found that rates of violence increased significantly over the period studied and there was an even bigger increase in portrayals of ...