CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- The majority of languages — roughly 85 percent of them — can be sorted into two categories: those, like English, in which the basic sentence form is subject-verb-object ("the girl kicks the ball"), and those, like Japanese, in which the basic sentence form is subject-object-verb ("the girl the ball kicks"). The reason for the difference has remained somewhat mysterious, but researchers from MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences now believe that they can account for it using concepts borrowed from information theory, the discipline, invented ...

The experience of being bullied is particularly detrimental to the psychological health of school girls who don't have social support from either adults or peers, according to a new study by Dr. Martin Guhn and colleagues from the University of British Columbia in Canada. In contrast, social support from adults or peers (or both) appears to lessen the negative consequences of bullying in this group, namely anxiety and depression. The work is published online in Springer's Journal of Happiness Studies. Guhn and his team looked at whether the combination of high levels ...

Researchers at Western University have created a mouse model that reproduces some of the chemical changes in the brain that occur with Alzheimer's, shedding new light on this devastating disease. Marco Prado, Vania Prado and their colleagues at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry's Robarts Research Institute, looked at changes related to a neurotransmitter or chemical messenger, named acetylcholine (ACh), and the kinds of memory problems associated with it. The research is now published online by PNAS. The researchers, including first author Amanda Martyn, ...

HOUSTON – (Oct. 10, 2012) – Materials scientists at Rice University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have created very thin color-changing films that may serve as part of inexpensive sensors for food spoilage or security, multiband optical elements in laser-driven systems and even as part of high-contrast displays. The new work led by Rice materials scientist Ned Thomas combines polymers into a unique, self-assembled metamaterial that, when exposed to ions in a solution or in the environment, changes color depending on the ions' ability to infiltrate ...

In recent years it has become clear that athletes who experience repeated impacts to the head may be at risk of potentially serious neurological and psychiatric problems. But a study of sports programs at three major universities, published in the October 2 Journal of Neurosurgery, finds that the way the injury commonly called concussion is usually diagnosed – largely based on athletes' subjective symptoms – varies greatly and may not be the best way to determine who is at risk for future problems. In addition, the way the term concussion is used in sports injuries may ...

October 10, 2012 (Toronto) – Mental illnesses and addictions take more of a toll on the health of Ontarians than cancer or infectious diseases, according to a new report by the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences and Public Health Ontario – yet this burden could be reduced with treatment, say scientists from Canada's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). "The majority of people with mental illness or addiction aren't receiving treatment, even though effective interventions are available," says report co-author Dr. Paul Kurdyak, Chief of General and Health ...

Three thousand new cases of Mantle Cell Lymphoma (MCL), a form of blood cancer, appear in the United States each year. With a median survival span of only five to seven years, according to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, this disease is devastating, and new therapies are sorely needed. One of the characteristics that defines MCL is heightened activity in the gene CCND1, which leads to the aggressive over-production of Cyclin D1, a protein that controls the proliferation of cells, explains Prof. Dan Peer of Tel Aviv University's Department of Cell Research and Immunology. ...

New Georgia Tech research shows that cell stiffness could be a valuable clue for doctors as they search for and treat cancerous cells before they're able to spread. The findings, which are published in the journal PLoS One, found that highly metastatic ovarian cancer cells are several times softer than less metastatic ovarian cancer cells. Assistant Professor Todd Sulchek and Ph.D. student Wenwei Xu used a process called atomic force microscopy (AFM) to study the mechanical properties of various ovarian cell lines. A soft mechanical probe "tapped" healthy, malignant and ...

In this week's PLOS Medicine, Anna Borquez from Imperial College London and an international group of authors developed a mathematical model representing the HIV epidemic among men who have sex with men (MSM) and transwomen in Lima, Peru as a test-case for the effectiveness of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). The model was used to investigate the population-level impact, cost, and cost-effectiveness of PrEP under a range of different scenarios. The authors found that strategic PrEP intervention could be a cost-effective addition to existing HIV prevention strategies ...

In low-and-middle income countries, pregnancy-related infections are a major cause of maternal death, can also be fatal to unborn and newborn babies, and are mostly caused by four types of conditions that are treatable and preventable, according to a review by US researchers published in this week's PLOS Medicine. The authors, led by Michael Gravett and a team of investigators from the University of Washington in Seattle, PATH (Program for Appropriate Technology in Health), and GAPPS (Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth, Seattle Children's) reviewed ...

CHICAGO – In children and adolescents with hemophilia, vigorous physical activity was associated with an elevated risk of bleeding, although it appears the absolute increase in risk may be small, according to a study in the October 10 issue of JAMA. Hemophilia is a bleeding disorder that, if untreated, causes recurrent bleeding into joints. "Vigorous physical activity is thought to increase risk of bleeds in children with hemophilia, but the magnitude of the risk is unknown," according to background information in the article. Information about risks associated with ...

CHICAGO – In an analysis that included nearly 100,000 Medicare patients who had experienced a heart attack, the use of a percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI; procedures such as balloon angioplasty or stent placement used to open narrowed coronary arteries) was lower for patients treated in states with public reporting of PCI outcomes compared with patients treated in states without public reporting, with these differences being particularly large in the highest-risk patients, according to a study in the October 10 issue of JAMA. However, the researchers found that there ...

CHICAGO – Plasma levels of proneurotensin are associated with the development of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cardiovascular and total mortality, and breast cancer in women during long-term follow-up, according to a study in the October 10 issue of JAMA. Neurotensin, an amino acid peptide primarily expressed in the central nervous system and gastrointestinal tract, regulates both satiety and breast cancer growth in the experimental setting, but little is known about its role in the development of breast cancer or cardiometabolic disease in humans, according to background ...

Boston, MA — Patients entering hospitals with heart attacks in states with mandatory public reporting are less likely to receive angioplasties to fix heart blockages than patients in states without public reporting, according to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health. The patients most affected were those considered "high-risk," that is, those who were extremely sick when they arrived at the hospital. It is the first study to look at public reporting for these interventions on a national level. The study appears in the October 10, 2012 edition of the Journal of ...

Women who have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM) have a significantly lower sexual quality of life finds a new study published today (10 October) in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. FGM is defined as any procedure 'involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia without medical reasons'. This study, carried out by researchers at King's College London, looks at the impact of FGM on the sexual quality of life of women who have undergone this procedure and compares them to a similar group of women who have not undergone ...

Washington, DC — Scientists studying a rare genetic disorder have identified a molecular pathway that may play a role in schizophrenia, according to new research in the October 10 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. The findings may one day guide researchers to new treatment options for people with schizophrenia — a devastating disease that affects approximately 1 percent of the world's population. Schizophrenia is characterized by a multitude of symptoms, including hallucinations, social withdrawal, and learning and memory deficits, which usually appear during late ...

HRT therapy has been subject to much discussion due to both positive effects (reduced risk of cardiovascular disease) and negative effects (increased risk of breast cancer). A paper published in the BMJ Group's Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Healthcare back in January cast doubt on the "unreliable" Million Women Study which associated HRT with an increased risk of breast cancer. Conflicting results have led clinicians to believe that time since menopause until HRT is initiated can account for differences in cardiovascular outcome. So authors from Denmark ...

Professor Alfirevic from the Department of Women's and Children's Health at the University of Liverpool argues that although premature children tend to have lower cognitive ability than their peers and 14.9 million are born prematurely each year worldwide, is it really possible to stop spontaneous preterm labour? In an accompanying research paper, Haas and colleagues carried out a review of several controlled trials to determine the most cost-effective tocolytic agent. Tocolytic drugs are used to delay delivery for up to 48 hours. This allows time for doctors to give ...

Comparative effectiveness research conducted over the past decade has had a limited impact on the way medical care is delivered, but many opportunities exist to help doctors and others in the medical system translate such research into better patient care, according to a new RAND Corporation study. Comparative effectiveness research is designed to improve health care decisions by providing evidence on the effectiveness, benefits and harms of different treatment options. The studies may compare drugs, medical devices, tests and surgical procedures to determine whether ...

The world's leading mass spectrometer manufacturers have agreed to license technology that enabled University of Southern California (USC) researchers to develop software that, for the first time, allows scientists to easily use and share research data collected across proprietary platforms. The ProteoWizard Toolkit, a cross-platform set of libraries and applications designed to facilitate the sharing of raw data and its analysis, is expected to bolster large-scale biological research and help improve the understanding of complex diseases like cancer. "Think of it like ...

Researchers have discovered that a form of oxytocin—the hormone responsible for making humans fall in love—has a similar effect on fish, suggesting it is a key regulator of social behaviour that has evolved and endured since ancient times. The findings, published in the latest edition of the journal Animal Behaviour, help answer an important evolutionary question: why do some species develop complex social behaviours while others spend much of their lives alone? "We know how this hormone affects humans," explains Adam Reddon, lead researcher and a graduate student ...

The Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, the USC Brain and Creativity Institute and Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA) are delighted to announce a longitudinal research collaboration to investigate the emotional, social and cognitive effects of musical training on childhood brain development. The five-year research project, Effects of Early Childhood Musical Training on Brain and Cognitive Development, will offer USC researchers an important opportunity to provide new insights and add rigorous data to an emerging discussion about the role of early music engagement in learning ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Before the financial crash of 2008, it was highly educated Americans who were most likely to pile on unmanageable levels of debt, a new study suggests. Overall, the percentage of Americans who were paying more than 40 percent of their income for debts like mortgages and credit card bills increased from about 17 percent in 1992 to 27 percent in 2008. But college-educated people were more likely than those with high school or less education to be above this 40 percent threshold - considered to be a risky amount of debt for most households. The association ...

Medicines could be made to have fewer side effects and work in smaller doses with the help of a new technique that makes drug molecules more resistant to breakdown by the human liver. Researchers based at Princeton University reported in the journal Science that they created a synthetic enzyme that acts as a catalyst to replace certain hydrogen atoms of a drug molecule with fluorine atoms. This swap stabilizes the molecule and makes it resistant to the liver enzymes that can inactivate a drug or create toxic byproducts. [More information is available at http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S34/97/92E16.] "Putting ...

Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine have shown for the first time in an animal model that vitamin C actively protects against osteoporosis, a disease affecting large numbers of elderly women and men in which bones become brittle and can fracture. The findings are published in the October 8 online edition of PLoS ONE. "This study has profound public health implications, and is well worth exploring for its therapeutic potential in people," said lead researcher Mone Zaidi, MD, Professor of Medicine (Endocrinology, Diabetes and Bone Disease, and of Structural and ...