Imagine you're a hockey goalie, and two opposing players are breaking in alone on you, passing the puck back and forth. You're aware of the linesman skating in on your left, but pay him no mind. Your focus is on the puck and the two approaching players. As the action unfolds, how is your brain processing this intense moment of "multi-tasking"? Are you splitting your focus of attention into multiple "spotlights?" Are you using one "spotlight" and switching between objects very quickly? Or are you "zooming out" the spotlight and taking it all in at once? These are the ...

A new UCLA study shows that physicians who work shorter shifts are less likely to make mistakes during medical procedures. Dr. Christian De Virgilio, lead investigator at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor- UCL A Medical Center (LA BioMed), led a team that studied the medical records of 2,470 patients who had undergone laparoscopic gallbladder surgery. The study focused on operations that took place before and after rules were put in place in 2003 limiting hours worked by doctors. About half of the operations were performed before a reduction in ...

Premier Cincinnati general dentist, Dr. Stuart Levy, is honored to be voted as a "Top Dentist" in Cincinnati Magazine by his peers for the third consecutive year in a row. Dr. Levy has been voted as a top dentist in Cincinnati in 2009, 2010, and 2011. "It is an honor to be voted as a top dentist in Cincinnati by my peers. Being recognized for quality dental health care is an honorable award that I truly appreciate. Each year I find myself on the list of top dentists, is a positive reassurance that I am providing the best care possible," said Dr. ...

CORAL GABLES, FL – Approximately 80,000 industrial chemicals are in use and about 700 new chemicals are introduced to commerce each year in the United States, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. To assess human health risks from exposure to harmful substances, James Englehardt, professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Miami, is proposing a new technique that is more efficient than current methods. The new model reduces the data requirements 21-fold from previous models, and can predict the likelihood of illness not just from exposure ...

PHILADELPHIA -- Often, and without much warning, pancreatic cancer cells slip through the endothelial cells, head into the blood and out to other parts of the body to metastasize, making it one of the deadliest and hardest to treat cancers today. Now, researchers from Thomas Jefferson University's Center for Translational Medicine have found that reducing levels of a well-known, cell-surface protein known as N-cadherin in those cancer cells can interfere with that activity. The disruption slowed down the pancreatic cancer cells' mobility, they found, and prolonged survival ...

CORAL GABLES, FL (December 20, 2011) – University of Miami biology professor Akira Chiba is leading a multidisciplinary team to develop the first systematic survey of protein interactions within brain cells. The team is aiming to reconstruct genome-wide in situ protein-protein interaction networks (isPIN) within the neurons of a multicellular organism. Preliminary data were presented at the American Society for Cell Biology annual meeting, December 3 through 7, 2011, in Denver, Colorado. "This work brings us closer to understanding the mechanics of molecules that keep ...

Premier Virginia Beach dentist, Dr. Christopher Hooper, extends essential features of his practice to the online community. By visiting the practice's website, patients can gain access to the convenient online appointment requesting feature. "I understand that my patients are not always able to call our office to make appointments during the day, and for that reason I am happy to offer my patients the opportunity to request appointments online. It only takes a moment to fill out the request form and submit it to our office, so our patients no longer have to worry ...

Richelene Mitchell, a single mother of seven, grapples with the humiliation of public assistance while living in a sprawling Connecticut housing project in her heart-shattering memoir, "Dear Self: A Year in the Life of a Welfare Mother". Found and published posthumously, "Dear Self" is an insightful portrait of a former member of 'the 99%' that revisits the roots of greed, corruption, and wealth inequality in America. Born the daughter of a sharecropper in the South, Richelene Mitchell struggled to make her life better. An honor student in high school, ...

A report by researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health provides an expanded review of six new air quality regulations proposed or recently adopted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA). These include the first national standards for reducing dangerous emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants from power plants. Though the cost of implementing the new regulations is estimated to be about $195 billion over the next 20 years or so, the economic, environmental and health benefits amount to well over $1 trillion, considerably outweighing ...

Reston, Va. – Positron emission tomography (PET) and a molecular imaging agent that captures the proliferation of cancer cells could prove to be a valuable method for imaging a form of Non-Hodgkin's disease called mantle cell lymphoma, a relatively rare and devastating blood cancer. The pilot study is published in the December issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine. Lymphoma is the term used for an array of cancers that affect blood cells and the lymphatic system. These cancers are typically categorized as either Hodgkin's or non-Hodgkin's. Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) ...

Recently, a convicted sex offender was taken into custody and arrested as a result of an anonymous tip provided to the police. The man, identified as Brian Liska, was located at a Boy Scout's meeting at Irving Elementary School in Bloomington, Illinois. Liska faces Class 4 felony charges of being a child sex offender in a school zone. At the time of his arrest, Liska was reportedly wearing a Cub Scout leader uniform. Procedure necessitated the uniform being taken as evidence in the ongoing investigation resulting from the felony charges. Bloomington police spokesperson ...

Where does prejudice come from? Not from ideology, say the authors of a new paper. Instead, prejudice stems from a deeper psychological need, associated with a particular way of thinking. People who aren't comfortable with ambiguity and want to make quick and firm decisions are also prone to making generalizations about others. In a new article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, Arne Roets and Alain Van Hiel of Ghent University in Belgium look at what psychological scientists have learned about ...

HOUSTON -- Variations in health care spending by Medicare and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas (BCBSTX) are similar throughout the state despite previous research, which found significant spending differences between the private and commercial sector in McAllen, Texas. The latest research results from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth), the Commonwealth Fund, and the Brookings Institution are published in the December issue of the American Journal of Managed Care. Researchers compared variations in spending and inpatient admissions in ...

"Title washing" is an emerging form of fraud that allows car owners to take advantage of unwitting car buyers by concealing information on the car's title. It is principally done in one of two ways. Frequently the perpetrators take advantage of varying vehicle documentation laws among different states to hide flood-damaged and salvaged title labels on the car's title. Scammers are also able to dupe victims by filing fraudulent paperwork with the state to obtain a duplicate title that does not show the valid lien attached to a vehicle. Insurance companies brand ...

NOAA scientists plumbed the deep ocean, probed the heights of the stratosphere, and surveyed some of the fiercest storm systems on Earth in meeting 2011's scientific challenges. Their discoveries are paying off in longer storm warning lead times, better understanding of our climate, and new knowledge about environmental disasters. NOAA's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) conducts the scientific research that advances weather forecasting, climate prediction, and environmental modeling, as well as our understanding of coastal threats such as tsunamis and ...

Scots of Pakistani origin are 50 per cent more likely to be admitted to hospital with chest pain and angina than those of Indian ethnicity, a study has found. Scots of Indian and Pakistani origin also have much greater levels of hospital admissions for both conditions than people of white Scottish ethnicity. Those of Pakistani origin were twice as likely to be admitted to hospital with chest pain compared with white Scots, according to the University of Edinburgh study. Scottish residents who defined their ethnicity as Indian were also 40 per cent more likely to be ...

Federal prosecutors requested a 385-year sentence for Lee B. Farkas, for his role in a complex bank fraud. In their memo, the federal prosecutors noted, "Sentencing him to the maximum penalty allowed by law will send the most forceful and unequivocal message to senior corporate executives that engaging in fraud and deceit in order to pump up your company or line your own pockets is unacceptable and will have severe consequences." According to Peter Henning, a Wayne State law professor, in a blog for the NY Times, this sentence is a continuation of the development ...

AMES, Iowa – Astronomers have discovered two Earth-sized planets that survived getting caught in the red-giant expansion of their host star. Steve Kawaler, an Iowa State University professor of physics and astronomy and a leader of the Kepler Asteroseismic Investigation, helped the research team study data from the Kepler space telescope to confirm that tiny variations of light from a star were actually caused by two planets of that star. The findings are published in the Letters section of the Dec. 22 edition of the journal Nature. Stéphane Charpinet of the Institut ...

When most people hear the acronyms DUI and DWI, they think of someone accused of driving after having had a few too many cocktails. That is definitely not always the case, though. Laws in Arizona and across the country prohibit driving under the influence (DUI) of or driving while impaired (DWI) by not only alcohol but any other substance -- legally prescribed medications, over the counter remedies, herbs, supplements and more -- that influences the concentration, attention span, motor skills, judgment and reaction time of the driver. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control ...

We know a lot about the links between a pregnant mother's health, behavior, and moods and her baby's cognitive and psychological development once it is born. But how does pregnancy change a mother's brain? "Pregnancy is a critical period for central nervous system development in mothers," says psychologist Laura M. Glynn of Chapman University. "Yet we know virtually nothing about it." Glynn and her colleague Curt A. Sandman, of University of the California Irvine, are doing something about that. Their review of the literature in Current Directions in Psychological Science, ...

New Jersey drivers who operate their motor vehicles in a negligent manner can be held financially responsible for their actions. However, determining when a driver's conduct is negligent, and to what extent he or she should be held liable, can be challenging. If you are involved in a motor vehicle accident, a basic knowledge of how New Jersey law determines fault and liability can help you become better informed of your legal options and lessen the chance of being taken advantage of by your insurance company. Types of Fault Negligence is one of the many types of fault. ...

Despite the numerous medical advances that happen every day, the infant mortality rate in the United States is still higher than most European countries. While experts believe this is closely linked to the growing rate of pre-term births, researchers are committed to finding ways to make labor and delivery safer. Northwestern Medicine® researchers are examining a new device that may support improved newborn health at delivery through closer monitoring of infant oxygen use during labor. "Poor birth outcomes are often directly related to loss of oxygen during labor and ...

Low in the south in the summer sky shines the constellation Scorpius and the bright, red supergiant star Antares. Many of the brightest stars in Scorpius, and hundreds of its fainter stars, are among the youngest stars found near the earth, and a new analysis of them may result in a rethinking of both their ages and the ages of other groups of stars. New research by astrophysicists from the University of Rochester focused on stars in the north part of the constellation, known as Upper Scorpius, which is a part of the Scorpius-Centaurus OB association, one of our best ...

At UCLA's Laboratory of Integrative Neuroimaging Technology, researchers use functional MRI brain scans to observe brain signal changes that take place during mental activity. They then employ computerized machine learning (ML) methods to study these patterns and identify the cognitive state — or sometimes the thought process — of human subjects. The technique is called "brain reading" or "brain decoding." In a new study, the UCLA research team describes several crucial advances in this field, using fMRI and machine learning methods to perform "brain reading" on smokers ...

The problem with credit scores is that in order to build credit, generally you have to have some sort of debt. Traditionally, this meant taking on a mortgage, car loan, student loan or credit card and paying it back responsibly. But what if you can't qualify for or don't want this kind of debt? After going through personal bankruptcy or foreclosure, some people have difficulty getting approved for a loan or a credit card. Others have been so burned by debt that they insist on living a cash-only lifestyle. How can you rebuild your credit without taking out a loan or charging ...