ALEXANDRIA, Va. – New studies released today reveal important advances in cancer care quality measurement, physician adherence to quality standards, and end-of-life care, while highlighting the overuse of contralateral prophylactic mastectomy. The studies were released in a presscast today in advance of ASCO's inaugural 2012 Quality Care Symposium. The Symposium will take place November 30 – December 1, 2012, at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego. Four major studies were highlighted in today's presscast: Study finds that most preventive double mastectomies occur ...

Scientists believe that fish ear bones and their distinctive growth rings can offer clues to the likely impacts of climate change in aquatic environments. The earbones, or 'otoliths', help fish to detect movement and to orient themselves in the water. Otoliths set down annual growth rings that can be measured and counted to estimate the age and growth rates of fish. "Otoliths can form the basis of new techniques for modelling fish growth, productivity and distribution in future environments," said Dr John Morrongiello of CSIRO's Wealth from Oceans Flagship, lead author ...

According to psychological lore, when it comes to items of information the mind can cope with before confusion sets in, the "magic" number is seven. But a new analysis by a leading Australian professor of psychiatry challenges this long-held view, suggesting the number might actually be four. In 1956, American psychologist George Miller published a paper in the influential journal Psychological Review arguing the mind could cope with a maximum of only seven chunks of information. The paper, "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two. Some Limits on Our Capacity ...

Quasars are the intensely luminous centres of distant galaxies that are powered by huge black holes. This new study has looked at one of these energetic objects – known as SDSS J1106+1939 – in great detail, using the X-shooter instrument on ESO's VLT at the Paranal Observatory in Chile [1]. Although black holes are noted for pulling material in, most quasars also accelerate some of the material around them and eject it at high speed. "We have discovered the most energetic quasar outflow known to date. The rate that energy is carried away by this huge mass of material ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- More than half of all couches tested in a Duke University-led study contained potentially toxic or untested chemical flame retardants that may pose risks to human health. Among the chemicals detected was "Tris," a chlorinated flame retardant that is considered a probable human carcinogen based on animal studies. "Tris was phased out from use in baby pajamas back in 1977 because of its health risks, but it still showed up in 41 percent of the couch foam samples we tested," said Heather Stapleton, associate professor of environmental chemistry at ...

Cambridge, MA (November 28, 2012)--The vast majority (80 percent) of parents with at least one child with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) would pursue genetic testing if a test were available that could identify risk in a younger sibling, citing the desire for earlier identification of children at risk, earlier evaluation and intervention, closer monitoring and lessened anxiety. The findings were reported in "Parental Interest in a Genetic Risk Assessment Test for Autism Spectrum Disorders," a survey published online today in the journal Clinical Pediatrics. The survey ...

PULLMAN, Wash. - Imagine landing on the moon or Mars, putting rocks through a 3-D printer and making something useful – like a needed wrench or replacement part. "It sounds like science fiction, but now it's really possible," says Amit Bandyopadhyay, professor in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Washington State University. Bandyopadhyay and a group of colleagues recently published a paper in Rapid Prototyping Journal demonstrating how to print parts using materials from the moon. Bandyopadhyay and Susmita Bose, professor in the School of Mechanical ...

Philadelphia, PA, November 28, 2012 – Medication development efforts for cocaine dependence have yet to result in an FDA approved treatment. The powerful rewarding effects of cocaine, the profound disruptive impact of cocaine dependence on one's lifestyle, and the tendency of cocaine to attract people who make poor life choices and then exacerbate impulsive behavior all make cocaine a vexing clinical condition. In this battle, many candidate pharmacotherapies have been tested, but none have succeeded sufficiently to be adopted widely. Perhaps like cancer, heart disease, ...

As part of the European study TRANSEURO, five patients with Parkinson's disease will undergo brain cell transplants at Skåne University Hospital in Lund, Sweden, in early 2013. These are the first operations of their kind in Europe for over 10 years. The TRANSEURO study, which in Sweden is led by Lund University, is now taking a critical approach to the viability of cell therapy as a future treatment for Parkinson's disease. Can we replace cells that die as a result of our most common neurological diseases? What are the therapies of the future for neurodegenerative diseases ...

Amsterdam, the Netherlands: The latest Access to Medicine Index, which ranks the top 20 pharmaceutical companies on their efforts to improve access to medicine in developing countries, finds that the industry is doing more than it was two years ago, with GlaxoSmithKline still outperforming its peers, but an expanding group of leaders closing the gap. The Index, published Wednesday, found that Johnson & Johnson was one of the most dramatic risers, climbing from the middle of the field in 9th position in the 2010 Index to 2nd this year, closely behind GlaxoSmithKline. It ...

Collaboration between medical and anthropological expertise can solve complex clinical problems in today's multicultural women's healthcare, shows Pauline Binder, a medical anthropologist, who will present her thesis on 1 December at the Faculty of Medicine, Uppsala University, Sweden. Pauline Binder has applied in-depth medical anthropological research approaches to understand clinical problems in ways not possible using only statistics. Why pregnant Somali women have an increased risk of complications even after migration has been the starting point for her fieldwork. ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of Oregon have found a way to exploit cloud-based Web browsers, using them to perform large-scale computing tasks anonymously. The finding has potential ramifications for the security of "cloud browser" services. At issue are cloud browsers, which create a Web interface in the cloud so that computing is done there rather than on a user's machine. This is particularly useful for mobile devices, such as smartphones, which have limited computing power.The cloud-computing paradigm pools the computational ...

An international team led by researchers from the University of Warwick and Oxford University is now dealing with unexpected results of an experiment with strongly heated graphite (up to 17,000 degrees Kelvin). The findings may pose a new problem for physicists working in laser-driven nuclear fusion and may also lead astrophysicists to revise our understanding of the life cycle of giant planets and stars. The researchers were attempting to get a better understanding about how energy is shared between the different species of matter, especially, how it is transferred from ...

Children of low socioeconomic status work harder to filter out irrelevant environmental information than those from a high-income background because of learned differences in what they pay attention to, according to new research published in the open access journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. Numerous studies in the past few years have begun to reveal how poverty affects brain development and function. In 2008, Amedeo D'Angiulli of Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada and his colleagues used electroencephalography (EEG) to measure the brain wave patterns associated ...

Virginia Tech physics researchers have discovered a quasar with the most energetic outflow ever, a finding that may answer questions about how the mass of a galaxy is linked to its central black hole mass and why there are so few large galaxies in the universe. Researchers studied the quasar known as SDSS J1106+1939 in great detail using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Paranal, Chile – the world's most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory, and found the most energetic quasar outflow ever discovered. The rate that energy is carried ...

New research has revealed a significant gap between what the government claims are the biggest security threats facing the UK and the fears of the population. Terrorism is not perceived as the most important threat to everyday life despite claims by policy makers. Politics researchers at the Universities of Warwick and Exeter led detailed focus groups across the UK and conducted a nationwide survey as part of an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded project which looked at public attitudes towards security threats. Since 2005, key objectives of successive ...

For Immediate Release – November 28, 2012 – (Toronto) – Most adults are drinking responsibly, and fewer are smoking or using illicit substances – but several areas of concern were found in the 2011 CAMH Monitor survey of Ontario substance use trends, released today by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). "More young adults are reporting that they drive within an hour of using cannabis - even more than those who report drinking and driving," says Dr. Robert Mann, CAMH Senior Scientist and lead researcher. "Yet the risks of doing so are significant." Nine ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – It probably won't come as a surprise to hear that most adult entertainment club workers – exotic dancers and other female club employees such as bartenders, waitresses and hostesses – don't have great medical benefits. The nature of their work makes them easy prey for repeated unwanted sexual advances and behavior. Add in the prevalence of risky sexual behavior and substance abuse and you've got a perfect storm for unchecked health risks. To measure the incidence of substance abuse and risky sexual behavior as they related to healthcare, Esther Choo, ...

A cornerstone of physics may require a rethink if findings at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are confirmed. Recent experiments suggest* that the most rigorous predictions based on the fundamental theory of electromagnetism—one of the four fundamental forces in the universe, and harnessed in all electronic devices—may not accurately account for the behavior of atoms in exotic, highly charged states. The theory in question is known as quantum electrodynamics, or QED, which physicists have held in high regard for decades because of its excellent ...

Picture two charged particles in a vacuum. Thanks to laws of elementary electrostatics, we can easily calculate the force these particles exert upon one another, and therefore predict their movements. Submerge those particles in a simple medium — say, water — and the calculation grows more complex. The charged particles' movements influence the water, which in turn may slow, speed, or otherwise alter the particles' paths. In this environment a prediction must also consider the water's reaction, or its dielectric response. But in real biological and material systems, ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Pound for pound, spider silk is one of the strongest materials known: Research by MIT's Markus Buehler has helped explain that this strength arises from silk's unusual hierarchical arrangement of protein building blocks. Now Buehler — together with David Kaplan of Tufts University and Joyce Wong of Boston University — has synthesized new variants on silk's natural structure, and found a method for making further improvements in the synthetic material. And an ear for music, it turns out, might be a key to making those structural improvements. The work ...

Using an enhanced form of "chemical microscopy" developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), researchers there have shown that they can peer into the structure of blended polymers, resolving details of the molecular arrangement at sub-micrometer levels.* The capability has important implications for the design of industrially important polymers like the polyethylene blends used to repair aging waterlines. Polyethylene is one of the most widely produced and used polymers in the world. It's used in many familiar applications—milk bottles, for ...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 26, 2012—Analysis published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS) in the most recent issue of the journal Science examine the relationship between public and private investments in research and development (R&D) and their importance in agricultural input industries. The Science article is drawn from a recent ERS study that provides new details on the rapid growth and changing composition of private investments in global agricultural R&D and traces the implications for agriculture. "Agriculture is more dependent ...

Nylon, Kevlar and other synthetic fabrics: Step aside. If new scientific research pans out, people may be sporting shirts, blouses and other garments made from fibers modeled after those in the icky, super-strong slime from a creature called the hagfish. The study appears in ACS' journal Biomacromolecules. Lead author Atsuko Negishi, her supervisor Douglas S. Fudge and colleagues explain that petroleum is the raw material for making modern synthetics. Rising prices and the quest for more sustainable alternatives have led scientists to consider the possibilities of using ...

Scientists are reporting an increasing use of flame retardants in the main gathering spot for adults, children and family pets in the home — the couch. In a study published in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology, they describe the first efforts to detect and identify the flame retardants applied to the foam inside couches found in millions of family rooms and living rooms across the U.S. Heather Stapleton and colleagues explain that many U.S. manufacturers adhere to California's flammability standard — termed "Technical Bulletin 117" (TB117) — and use flame ...