The majority of observational studies have shown that alcohol intake, especially heavy drinking, increases a number of upper-aero-digestive tract (UADT) and other cancers, and even moderate drinking is associated with a slight increase in the risk of breast cancer. A meta analysis published in the Annals of Oncology compares the effects between light drinkers (an average reported intake of up to 1 typical drink/day) versus "non-drinkers" in terms of relative risks for a number of types of cancer. The authors concluded that while the risk of these cancers was only slightly ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A study published online in the Journal of Consumer Research finds that people can differ widely on the level of detail makes them feel they understand something. In experiments, the very same explanations that some subjects required before they would pay top dollar seemed to drive down what others were willing to pay. The natural trick for a marketer would be to figure out which customers are which. The study does that, too. "The fact is that people differ," said Steven Sloman, professor of cognitive, linguistic, and psychological ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- Delirium, a common acute condition with significant short- and long-term effects on cognition and function, should be identified as an indicator of poor long-term prognosis, prompting immediate and effective management strategies, according to the authors of a new systematic evidence review. "Delirium is extremely common among older adults in intensive care units and is not uncommon in other hospital units and in nursing homes, but too often it's ignored or accepted as inevitable. Delirium significantly increases risk of developing dementia and triples ...

Why do people in deprived areas live life in the fast lane? It may be because of the age of people they observe in the street, according to a new study by Daniel Nettle and colleagues from Newcastle University in the UK. Their work suggests that because fewer older people are seen out in the street in deprived neighborhoods, younger generations assume that people die young. As a result, they may be adapting the speed at which they live their lives accordingly—for example, by having children earlier in life. Nettle and team's work is published online in Springer's journal ...

Women who go into early menopause are twice as likely to suffer from coronary heart disease and stroke, new Johns Hopkins-led research suggests. The association holds true in patients from a variety of different ethnic backgrounds, the study found, and is independent of traditional cardiovascular disease risk factors, the scientists say. "If physicians know a patient has entered menopause before her 46th birthday, they can be extra vigilant in making recommendations and providing treatments to help prevent heart attacks and stroke," says Dhananjay Vaidya, Ph.D., an ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A new study finds significant associations between antibodies for multiple oral bacteria and the risk of pancreatic cancer, adding support for the emerging idea that the ostensibly distant medical conditions are related. The study of blood samples from more than 800 European adults, published online Sept. 18 in the journal Gut, found that high antibody levels for one of the more infectious periodontal bacterium strains of Porphyromonas gingivalis were associated with a two-fold risk for pancreatic cancer. Meanwhile, study subjects ...

Veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder who are also battling drug or alcohol problems face a higher risk of death, according to new research from the University of Michigan Health System and the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System. The new study is the first to examine the association between drug or alcohol use disorders and death in veterans with PTSD, and also includes data from the nation's youngest veterans who have returned from conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kipling Bohnert, Ph.D., the study's lead author, says the research sheds new light on the ...

Researchers have developed a new way to observe and track large numbers of rapidly moving objects under a microscope, capturing precise motion paths in three dimensions. Over the course of the study--reported online Sept. 17, 2012, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences--researchers followed an unprecedented 24,000 rapidly moving cells over wide fields of view and through large sample volumes, recording each cell's path for as long as 20 seconds. "We can very precisely track the motion of small things, more than a thousand of them at the same time, in ...

This press release is available in German.On Earth the atmosphere and the magnetic field weaken cosmic rays. But on Moon and Mars they pelt down unhamperdly. The cosmic radiation can harm astronauts and could cause cancer in the long run as a result of damage in DNA and cells. Chiara La Tessa is manager of experiments in GSI biophysics. She explains why Moon or Mars ground stations would not be built from terrestrial high tech material: "In space travels every gram counts. Transporting building material through space would lead to a cost explosion. That is why ground ...

Scientists at the Medical College of Wisconsin, in a team led by Carol Everson, Ph.D., professor of neurology, cell biology, neurobiology and anatomy, have discovered abnormalities in bone and bone marrow in rats undergoing chronic lack of sleep. They discovered abnormalities in serum markers of bone metabolism in sleep-deprived rats, which led them to conduct direct measurements of bone parameters; this time in rats experiencing recurrent sleep restriction during a large portion of their young adulthood. The results show a dramatic imbalance between bone apposition ...

During the first six months of 2012, sea surface temperatures in the Northeast Shelf Large Marine Ecosystem were the highest ever recorded, according to the latest Ecosystem Advisory issued by NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC). Above-average temperatures were found in all parts of the ecosystem, from the ocean bottom to the sea surface and across the region, and the above average temperatures extended beyond the shelf break front to the Gulf Stream. The annual 2012 spring plankton bloom was intense, started earlier and lasted longer than average. This ...

New Rochelle, NY, September 18, 2012—A child who suffers a moderate or severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) may still have substantial functional disabilities and reduced quality of life 2 years after the injury. After those first 2 years, further improvement may be minimal. Better interventions are needed to prevent long-lasting consequences of TBI in children conclude the authors of a study published in Journal of Neurotrauma, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Neurotrauma website at http://www.liebertpub.com/neu. Frederick ...

SHREWSBURY, MA – A new article published today in International Journal of Obesity found there is no evidence to suggest the current obesity epidemic in the United States can be specifically blamed on consumption of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). The commentary concludes that after an extensive review of all available HFCS research, there is overwhelming evidence showing HFCS is nutritionally equivalent to sugar. This opinion is in-line with the American Medical Association and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, both of which concluded that HFCS is not a unique ...

New experiments in group decision making show that having a seat at the table is very different than having a voice. Scholars at Brigham Young University and Princeton examined whether women speak less than men when a group collaborates to solve a problem. In most groups that they studied, the time that women spoke was significantly less than their proportional representation – amounting to less than 75 percent of the time that men spoke. The new study is published by the top academic journal in political science, American Political Science Review. "Women have something ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– The orientation of a diagram on the page of a textbook may seem inconsequential, but it can have a significant impact on a reader's ability to comprehend the information as presented, according to a team of researchers at UC Santa Barbara, Vanderbilt University, and West Carolina University. Their findings appear in a recent issue of the journal Bioscience. Focusing on variously formatted cladograms –– also known as phylogenetic trees –– the researchers found that two diagrams may contain the same information, but they aren't necessarily equivalent ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - More than one-third of young adults who reported being victims of dating violence as teenagers had two or more abusive partners, a new study suggests. The study involved 271 college students who recalled dating violence - including physical, sexual and psychological abuse - from ages 13 to 19. Overall, nearly two-thirds of both men and women reported some type of abuse during their teenage years, which falls in line with other studies. But it was surprising how many teen victims had two or more abusive partners, said Amy Bonomi, lead author of the ...

Proteins accelerate certain chemical reactions in cells by several orders of magnitude. The molecular mechanism by which the Ras protein accelerates the cleavage of the molecule GTP and thus slows cell growth is described by biophysicists at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum led by Prof. Dr. Klaus Gerwert in the Online Early Edition of the journal PNAS. Using a combination of infrared spectroscopy and computer simulations, they showed that Ras puts a phosphate chain under tension to such an extent that a phosphate group can very easily detach - the brake for cell growth. Mutated ...

Biologists and informaticists at Indiana University have produced one of the most extensive pictures ever of mutation processes in the DNA sequence of an organism, elucidating important new evolutionary information about the molecular nature of mutations and how fast those heritable changes occur. By analyzing the exact genomic changes in the model prokaryote Escherichia coli that had undergone over 200,000 generations of growth in the absence of natural selective pressures, the team led by IU College of Arts and Sciences Department of Biology professor Patricia L. Foster ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – U.S. adults repeatedly rate bullying as a major health problem for U.S. children. But a new poll from the University of Michigan shows adults have different views about what bullying behaviors should prompt schools to take action. The University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health recently asked a nationwide sample of adults what behaviors should be considered bullying and what behaviors should spur school officials to intervene. The vast majority of adults (95 percent) say schools should take action if a student ...

As sea ice in the Arctic continues to shrink during this century, more than two thirds of the area with sufficient snow cover for ringed seals to reproduce also will disappear, challenging their survival, scientists report in a new study. The ringed seal, currently under consideration for threatened species listing, builds caves to rear its young in snow drifts on sea ice. Snow depths must be on average at least 20 centimeters, or 8 inches, to enable drifts deep enough to support the caves. "It's an absolute condition they need," said Cecilia Bitz, an associate professor ...

Women are better than men at recognizing living things and men are better than women at recognizing vehicles. That is the unanticipated result of an analysis Vanderbilt psychologists performed on data from a series of visual recognition tasks collected in the process of developing a new standard test for expertise in object recognition. "These results aren't definitive, but they are consistent with the following story," said Gauthier. "Everyone is born with a general ability to recognize objects and the capability to get really good at it. Nearly everyone becomes expert ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Long mandatory minimum sentences or strong limits on judicial discretion can counter-productively reduce the incentives of prison inmates to engage in rehabilitative behavior, thereby raising recidivism rates, according to published research co-written by a University of Illinois economics professor. Dan Bernhardt, the IBE Distinguished Professor of Economics at Illinois, says rehabilitation incentives are maximized when the lengths of prison sentences are neither too short, nor too long. According to the paper, inmates with short prison sentences ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– An international team of physicists is working to ascertain more about the fundamental physical laws that are at work in a process known as convection, which occurs in a boiling pot of water as well as in the turbulent movement of the liquid outer core of the Earth. The team's new finding specifies the way that the temperature of a gas or liquid varies with the distance from a heat source during convection. The research is expected to eventually help engineers with applications such as the design of cooling systems, for instance, in nuclear power ...

Irvine, Calif., Sept. 17, 2012 — Researchers with UC Irvine's Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center have identified a major reason why melanoma is largely resistant to chemotherapy. UCI dermatologist Dr. Anand Ganesan and colleagues found a genetic pathway in melanoma cells that inhibits the cellular mechanism for detecting DNA damage wrought by chemotherapy, thereby building up tolerance to cancer-killing drugs. Targeting this pathway, comprising the genes RhoJ and Pak1, heralds a new approach to treating the deadly skin cancer, which claims nearly 10,000 U.S. lives ...

Boulder, Colo., USA – GSA Bulletin papers posted online from 20 July through 14 September 2012 elaborate on geoscience from Algeria, Mexico, Spain, Turkey, Nova Scotia, Switzerland, New Mexico, and the U.S. Rocky Mountains. Topics include tectonics, mineral formation, the Moho, age dating using zircon crystals, the Code of Stratigraphic Nomenclature, atmospheric CO2, and early animal evolution. GSA Bulletin articles published ahead of print are online at http://gsabulletin.gsapubs.org/content/early/recent. Representatives of the media may obtain complimentary copies of ...