Extensive ongoing research on biotic invasions around the world constantly increases data availability and improves data quality. New research in the United States shows how using improved data from previous studies on the establishment of exotic plant species changes the understanding of patterns of species naturalization, biological invasions, and their underlying mechanisms. The study was published in the open access journal NeoBiota. Over the centuries, people brought uncounted numbers of nonnative or exotic plant species to the United States for a range of purposes. ...

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Feb. 23, 2012) -- A pilot study led by University of Kentucky researchers shows that the gene expression analysis of urine sediment could provide a noninvasive way to analyze interstitial cystitis in some patients. Interstitial cystitis, also known as bladder pain syndrome, is a debilitating disease of the urinary bladder. The disease can occur with or without bladder ulcers (called Hunner lesions). Interstitial cystitis is a difficult disease to study because animal models are limited, and human patients cannot ethically be subjected to invasive research ...

EVANSTON, Ill. --- If your political candidate of choice falls behind in the polls, will you lose faith in his ability to win? Probably not. A new study from Northwestern University suggests that people tend to believe that their preferred candidate will win an election, no matter what the polls predict. The study was published Feb. 21 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. "People thought their preferred candidate had a higher chance of winning, in every election, no matter in which state they live, no matter who was running, no matter which ...

WASHINGTON – Impulsive children with attention problems tend to play more video games, while kids in general who spend lots of time video gaming may also develop impulsivity and attention difficulties, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. "This is an important finding because most research on attention problems has focused on biological and genetic factors rather than on environmental factors," said Douglas A. Gentile, PhD, of Iowa State University and lead author of the study published this week in the debut issue of APA's journal ...

The latest edition of Brandworkz, Version 5.0 is to be revealed at marketing technology exhibition, TFM&A at Earls Court 2, London on 28 & 29 February. Brandworkz brand management technology is further strengthened with this major release. Brandworkz 5.0 gives brand and marketing managers more tools than ever before to manage their brands efficiently, increase brand consistency and grow their businesses. With new features integrated with existing modules in the software such as Digital Asset Management, the package is now second to none. Powerful new features ...

Obesity can be a dangerous risk to our physical health, but according to a Tel Aviv University researcher, avoiding the gym can also take a toll on our mental health, leading to depression and greater burnout rates at work. Dr. Sharon Toker of TAU's Recanati Faculty of Management, working with Dr. Michal Biron from the University of Haifa, discovered that employees who found the time to engage in physical activity were less likely to experience a deterioration of their mental health, including symptoms of burnout and depression. The best benefits were achieved among ...

BEER-SHEVA, Israel, February 23, 2012 – A new study on the prevalence of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among firefighters in Israel indicates that approximately 90 percent show some form of full or partial symptoms. According to the study by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev's Dr. Marc Lougassi, a firefighter himself, 24 percent of active firefighters in Israel suffer from full PTSD, 67 percent display partial PTSD while only nine percent showed no symptoms. PTSD can occur after exposure to serious injury to oneself or another, or another's death and then ...

Sometimes knowing that a new technology works is not enough. You also must know why it works to get marketplace acceptance. New information from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)* about how layered switching devices for novel computer memory systems work, for example, may now allow these structures to come to market sooner, helping bring about faster, lower-powered computers. Switches based on transition-metal oxides have great potential as memory devices that retain their information even when the power is turned off. One type is made by stacking ...

A new study published in the American Journal of Transplantation reveals that cigarette smoke exposure, in a cause-effect manner, results in graft rejection that would have been prevented by certain drug treatments. Led by Zhenhua Dai, MD, PhD, of the University of Texas Health Science Center, researchers used mouse transplant models to investigate the impact of second hand smoke (SHS) on transplant survival and its mechanism of action. Seven to eight mice per group were exposed to SHS and treated with or without immunoregulatory agents. They were exposed to SHS 4 weeks ...

Washington, D.C. –Today the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues posted on its website, www.bioethics.gov, hundreds of supporting documents related to its investigation into the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) studies conducted in Guatemala in the 1940s. The documents include a spreadsheet that Commission staff painstakingly created to document the research subjects in Guatemala. In addition, the Commission has posted a Spanish translation of its report, "Ethically Impossible" STD Research in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948. As the world is now aware, ...

San Diego, Calif. – Beyond the personal tragedy of chronic alcoholism there is heartbreak in the biological sense, too. Scientists know severe alcoholism stresses the heart and that mitochondria, the cellular energy factories, are especially vulnerable to dysfunction. But they don't know the precise mechanism. Now new experiments led by a team at the Wadsworth Center of the New York State Department of Health in Albany, and Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, may provide insights into possible modes of heart damage from alcohol. The teams will present their findings ...

BOSTON, MA—Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) have published findings that question the reliability of a new Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) quality measure. The study, "Assessment of Medicare's Imaging Efficiency Measure for Emergency Department Patients With Atraumatic Headache" finds that the CMS measure—an attempt to reduce computed tomography (CT) scans in emergency departments (ED)—does not accurately determine which hospitals are performing CT scans inappropriately. The study is electronically published in the February 23, 2012 issue ...

HUNTSVILLE, TX (2/23/12) – A Sam Houston State University professor is working on a series of studies that examine the effects of race and ethnicity on state and federal sentencing outcomes, including incarceration and sentence length decisions. In his most recent research published online by Justice Quarterly, Dr. Travis Franklin, an Assistant Professor at the College of Criminal Justice, studied the sentencing of Native American offenders in federal courts. Using data from the United States Sentencing Commission for the years 2006-2008, he found that Native Americans, ...

San Diego, Calif. – The street drug commonly referred to as "bath salts" is one of a growing list of synthetic and unevenly regulated narcotics that are found across the United States and on the Internet. New research on this potent drug paints an alarming picture, revealing that bath salts pack a powerful double punch, producing combined effects similar to both methamphetamine (METH) and cocaine. "This combination of effects is particularly novel and unexpected," said Louis J. De Felice of Virginia Commonwealth University's School of Medicine in Richmond. "Methamphetamine ...

San Diego, Calif. – Cigarette smoke has long been considered the main risk factor for heart disease. But new research from Brown University in Providence, R.I., shows that nicotine itself, a component of cigarette smoke, can contribute to the disease process by changing cell structure in a way that promotes migration and invasion of the smooth muscle cells that line blood vessels. In particular, invading cells can remodel structures called podosomes, and this leads to further degradation of vessel integrity. Ultimately, this cellular migration and invasion process gives ...

San Diego, Calif. – In H.G. Wells' classic science-fiction novel, The War of the Worlds, bacteria save the Earth from destruction when the Martian invaders succumb to infections to which humans have become immune through centuries of evolution. If a team led by researchers at Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory's Center for Nanoscale Control of Geologic CO2 (NCGC) has its way, bacteria – with a little assist from science – will help prevent global destruction for real by trapping underground a greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2 ), that threatens Earth's climate. The ...

MIAMI – (February 23, 2012) -- Sharks are among the most threatened of marine species worldwide due to unsustainable overfishing. Sharks are primarily killed for their fins alone, to fuel the growing demand for shark fin soup, which is an Asia delicacy. A new study by University of Miami (UM) scientists in the journal Marine Drugs has discovered high concentrations of BMAA in shark fins, a neurotoxin linked to neurodegenerative diseases in humans including Alzheimer's and Lou Gehrig Disease (ALS). The study suggests that consumption of shark fin soup and cartilage pills ...

VIDEO: Adam Levine, M.D., an emergency medicine physician with Rhode Island Hospital and a volunteer physician with International Medical Corps, was deployed to a field hospital near Misurata, Libya, during the... Click here for more information. PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Adam Levine, M.D., an emergency medicine physician with Rhode Island Hospital and a volunteer physician with International Medical Corps, was deployed to a field hospital near Misurata, Libya, during the conflict ...

San Diego, Calif. – HIV has eluded vaccine-makers for thirty years, in part due to the virus' extreme ability to mutate. Physical scientists and clinical virologists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Ragon Institute in Cambridge, Mass., have identified a promising strategy for vaccine design using a mathematical technique that has also been used in problems related to quantum physics, as well as in analyses of stock market price fluctuations and studies of enzyme sequences. The team, led by Arup Chakraborty of MIT and Bruce Walker of the Ragon ...

While boys generally do better than girls in science and math, some studies have found that girls do better in arithmetic. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that the advantage comes from girls' superior verbal skills. "People have always thought that males' advantage is in math and spatial skills, and girls' advantage is in language," says Xinlin Zhou of Beijing Normal University, who cowrote the study with Wei Wei, Hao Lu, Hui Zhao, and Qi Dong of Beijing Normal University and Chuansheng Chen ...

San Diego, Calif. – For snakes, spiders, and other venomous creatures, the "business end," or active part, of a toxin is the area on the surface of a protein that is most likely to undergo rapid evolution in response to environmental constraints, say researchers from Ben Gurion University in Israel. Understanding these evolutionary forces can help researchers predict which part of unstudied toxins will do damage, and may also aid in the design of novel synthetic proteins with tailored pharmaceutical properties. The team will present its results at the 56th Annual Meeting ...

A small study of Latina women with young children led by researchers at Johns Hopkins Children's Center shows moms value a pediatrician's empathy and warmth far more than their ability to speak Spanish or other conveniences. A report on the findings is published online Feb. 15 in Maternal and Child Health Journal. The lead investigator a pediatrics fellow at Johns Hopkins, conducted the research during post-residency training at the University of Michigan as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar. The study involved interviews with 38 Latina mothers with ...

Calorie listings on fast-food chain restaurant menus might meet federal labeling requirements but don't do a good job of helping consumers trying to make healthy meal choices, a new Columbia University School of Nursing (CUSON) study reports. The study, by Elizabeth Gross Cohn, RN, NP, DNSc, assistant professor of nursing at CUSON, and colleagues, was published online on February 16, 2012, in the Journal of Urban Health. The researchers studied the calorie counts for 200 food items on menu boards in fast-food chain restaurants in the New York inner-city neighborhood of ...

San Diego, Calif. – When bacteria wage a turf war, some of the combatants have an extra weapon. Certain strains of the bacteria E. coli produce proteins that kill competing E. coli and other like microbes, and researchers from Newcastle University in England have recently discovered something surprising about one of these lethal proteins: even after the toxic folded portion of the protein is removed, the unfolded end is still deadly. The finding may one day help scientists find new, more targeted ways to kill antibiotic-resistant microbes. The researchers will present their ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — The deaths of at least 13 workers who were refinishing bathtubs have been linked to a chemical used in products to strip surfaces of paint and other finishes. An investigation started by researchers at Michigan State University in 2011 has found that 13 deaths since 2000 – including three in Michigan – involved the use of paint-stripping products containing methylene chloride, a highly volatile, colorless and toxic chemical that is widely used as a degreaser and paint stripper. The chemical, in addition to being used in industrial settings, is available ...