COLUMBUS, Ohio - A recent study examined people's bodily responses while watching presidential campaign ads - and discovered another way that people avoid political information that challenges their beliefs. In the last days of the 2008 campaign, researchers had people watch a variety of actual ads for Republican presidential candidate John McCain and his Democratic rival Barack Obama while the viewers' heart rates, skin conductance and activation of facial muscles were monitored. The results showed that partisan participants reacted strongly to ads featuring their ...

There is no scientific evidence that low-level electromagnetic field exposure from mobile phones and other transmitting devices causes adverse health effects, according to a report presented by a Norwegian Expert Committee. In addition, the Committee provides advice to authorities about risk management and regulatory practice. The Committee has assessed the health hazards from low-level electromagnetic fields generated by radio transmitters. These electromagnetic fields are found around mobile phones, wireless phones and networks, mobile phone base stations, broadcasting ...

Muscles have a pool of stem cells which provides a source for muscle growth and for regeneration of injured muscles. The stem cells must reside in special niches of the muscle for efficient growth and repair. The developmental biologists Dr. Dominique Bröhl and Prof. Carmen Birchmeier of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch have elucidated how these stem cells colonize these niches. At the same time, they show that the stem cells weaken when, due to a mutation, they locate outside of the muscle fibers instead of in their stem cell niches (Developmental ...

An extract from the plant Cannabis sativa (trade name Sativex®) was approved in May 2011 for patients suffering from moderate to severe spastic paralysis and muscle spasms due to multiple sclerosis (MS). In an early benefit assessment pursuant to the "Act on the Reform of the Market for Medicinal Products" (AMNOG), the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) examined whether the new drug, which is used as a mouth spray, offers an added benefit over the optimized standard therapy. However, no such added benefit can be inferred from the dossier, ...

The earth's limited surface is expected to stretch to everything: food for soon to be nine billion people, feed for our beef cattle and fowl, fuel for our cars, forests for our paper, cotton for our clothes. What is more, the earth's forests are preferably to be left untouched to stabilise the climate. Human ecologist and economist Kenneth Hermele will shortly be defending a thesis at Lund University, Sweden, in which he demonstrates that the struggle for land is intensifying rapidly. Kenneth Hermele has conducted field studies in Brazil, where sugar cane has been cultivated ...

Is it possible to create suitable and amusing educational computer games? Can you use qualities from other types of games? And what do the children really think of these kinds of games? Wolmet Barendregt from The University of Gothenburg, conducts research on children's game playing, how we can support learning with design and include the children in the design process. And Wolmet Barendregt certainly involves the children very much in her research. During the Science Festival's school program in April this year, over a hundred preschool children attended a creative game ...

Researchers from Cardiff University have discovered a new property of black holes: their dying tones could reveal the cosmic crash that produced them. Black holes are regions of space where gravity is so strong that not even light can escape and so isolated black holes are truly dark objects and don't emit any form of radiation. However, black holes that get deformed, because of other black holes or stars crashing into them, are known to emit a new sort of radiation, called gravitational waves, which Einstein predicted nearly a hundred years ago. Gravitational waves ...

A team of Cardiff University scientists is leading new research to develop a vaccine against anthrax to help counteract the threat of bioterrorism. Working with scientists from the Republic of Georgia, Turkey and the USA, Professor Les Baillie from Cardiff University's School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences is leading a NATO project to tackle the potential misuse of anthrax. "Currently the majority of the world's population is susceptible to infection with Bacillus anthracis the bacterium which causes anthrax," according to Professor Baillie, who leads ...

The clot-inhibiting drug apixaban (trade name: Eliquis®) was approved in May 2011 for the prevention of thrombosis (blood clots) after operations to replace a hip or knee joint. In an early benefit assessment pursuant to the "Act on the Reform of the Market for Medicinal Products" (AMNOG), the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) examined the added benefit of apixaban. IQWiG found proof of minor added benefit for adult patients who had undergone hip replacement: symptomatic clots in the deep veins of the leg occurred less frequently with ...

Los Angeles, (17 September 2012). Kids who get migraine headaches are much more likely than other children to also have behavioral difficulties, including social and attention issues, and anxiety and depression. The more frequent the headaches, the greater the effect, according to research out now in the journal Cephalagia, published by SAGE. Marco Arruda, director of the Glia Institute in São Paulo, Brazil, together with Marcelo Bigal of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York studied 1,856 Brazilian children aged 5 to 11. The authors say that this is the ...

The antidiabetic drug metformin is not prescribed for patients with reduced kidney function because the risk of adverse effects has been regarded as unacceptably high. A study at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, has found that the risks have been substantially overrated. As a result, many more patients with diabetes may be able to enjoy the benefits of the medication. Type 2 diabetes, a very common condition, is increasingly prevalent around the world. Keeping diabetes under control and preventing complications requires not only lifestyle changes, ...

Bethesda, MD — If you are overweight and pregnant, your baby isn't destined to a life of obesity after all, according to a new research report published online in The FASEB Journal. In the report, a team of U.S. scientists show that modifying fat intake during pregnancy to a moderate level is enough to benefit the child regardless of the mother's size. Specifically, they found that a protein called "SIRT1" rewrites a developing fetus' histone code, which affects his or her "epigenetic likelihood" of being overweight or obese throughout his or her lifetime. "We are finding ...

Children who grow up without siblings have a more than 50 percent higher risk of being overweight or obese than children with siblings. This is the finding of a study of 12,700 children in eight European countries, including Sweden, published in Nutrition and Diabetes. The University of Gothenburg, Sweden, was one of the participating universities in the study. The study was conducted under the framework of the European research project Identification and prevention of Dietary and lifestyle-induced health EFfects In Children and infantS (IDEFICS), where researchers from ...

This press release is available in German.An international collaboration led by Tom Battin from the Department of Limnology of the University of Vienna unravels the role of Alpine glaciers for carbon cycling. The scientists uncover the unexpected biogeochemical complexity of dissolved organic matter locked in glaciers and study its fate for carbon cycling in glacier-fed streams. Their paper, now published in Nature Geoscience, expands current knowledge on the importance of the vanishing cryosphere for biogeochemistry. Glaciers are receding worldwide with noticeable implications ...

Researchers at the Institute of Food Research have tested a new technique to ensure fresh produce is free of bacterial contamination. Plasmas are a mix of highly energetic particles created when gases are excited by an energy source. They can be used to destroy bacteria but as new research shows, some can hide from its effects in the microscopic surface structures of different foods. Eating fresh fruit and vegetables is promoted as part of a healthy lifestyle, and consumers are responding to this by eating more and in a greater variety. Ensuring fruit and vegetables ...

Babies born early run a greater risk of serious complications. The researchers at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, have now developed a method to predict if pregnant women with preterm contractions will give birth within seven days. The method offers new possibilities to delay delivery and prepare care for the premature baby. Delivery before 37 full weeks, so-called preterm delivery, is the biggest problem in perinatal medicine today, as it increases the risk of the child being seriously ill in the short and long term. The problem is that only ...

Seriously ill patients in intensive care units are being cared for in environments with sound levels more than 20 dB higher than the WHO's recommendations. This is shown by a study carried out in partnership between the University of Gothenburg and the University of Borås. In the study, the researchers registered sound levels around 13 seriously ill patients cared for in the intensive care unit at Södra Älvsborg Hospital over a 24-hour period. The study shows that the sound levels around seriously ill patients were on average between 51 and 55 dB. This is comparable ...

Ottawa, Canada (September 17, 2012) –A new study published today in the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism (APNM) looks beyond the much-feared weight gain common to first-year students and reports on the full 4-year impact of higher education on weight, BMI, and body composition. "Gropper et al. present a unique study that follows students through their undergraduate years. It documents the nature of the weight gain and shows the differences between males and females," says Susan Whiting, a professor of nutrition and dietetics at the University of ...

Alexandria, VA – With less than two months before Election Day, AGI and its federation of 50 professional geoscience societies have come together again to provide a list of critical issues and policy recommendations for the next presidential administration. The document, Critical Needs for the Twenty-first Century: the Role of the Geosciences, is meant to inform policymakers of the unique knowledge, experience, and ingenuity of the geoscience community, and to address some of society's most pressing issues. More commonly known as the Critical Needs Document, the new ...

The U.S. federal government is significantly underestimating the costs of carbon pollution because it is using a faulty analytical model, according to a new study published in the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences. A more appropriate accounting of costs would pave the way to cleaner, more economically efficient sources of power generation, the study found. "This is a wake-up call for America to start aggressively investing in low carbon sources of energy. The very real economic benefits will accrue quickly and increase over time," said Dr. Laurie Johnson, ...

New Orleans, LA – Dr. Russell Russo, an Orthopedic Surgeon at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans, and other researchers stress that orthopedists should have a high index of suspicion for necrotizing fasciitis, or flesh-eating bacterial infection, in every patient with pain or other symptoms that are out of proportion to the initial diagnosis. Their recommendations are published in the September 2012 issue of Orthopedics Today. Although relatively rare and difficult to diagnose because its symptoms often resemble other conditions like synovitis or cellutitis, a missed ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Extreme precipitation in the tropics comes in many forms: thunderstorm complexes, flood-inducing monsoons and wide-sweeping cyclones like the recent Hurricane Isaac. Global warming is expected to intensify extreme precipitation, but the rate at which it does so in the tropics has remained unclear. Now an MIT study has given an estimate based on model simulations and observations: With every 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature, the study finds, tropical regions will see 10 percent heavier rainfall extremes, with possible impacts for flooding in populous ...

ST. LOUIS – Many U.S. schools are not prepared for bioterrorism attacks, outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases or pandemics, despite the recent 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic that resulted in more than 18,000 deaths worldwide, Saint Louis University researchers say. The study, led by Terri Rebmann, Ph.D., associate professor at SLU's Institute for Biosecurity, surveyed about 2000 nurses working in elementary, middle and high schools across 26 states. The findings reveal that only 48 percent of schools address pandemic preparedness and only 40 percent of schools have ...

The following highlights summarize research papers that have been recently published in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), Journal of Geophysical Research – Solid Earth (JGR-B), Journal of Geophysical Research – Planets (JGR-E), Journal of Geophysical Research – Earth Surface (JGR-F), Journal of Geophysical Research – Biogeosciences (JGR-G). In this release: 1. Characterizing the surface composition of Mercury 2. African dust forms red soils in Bermuda 3. Sea level controls carbon accumulation in the Everglades 4. Climate change threatens permafrost in soil 5. ...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Magnetically imploded tubes called liners, intended to help produce controlled nuclear fusion at scientific "break-even" energies or better within the next few years, have functioned successfully in preliminary tests, according to a Sandia research paper accepted for publication by Physical Review Letters (PRL). To exceed scientific break-even is the most hotly sought-after goal of fusion research, in which the energy released by a fusion reaction is greater than the energy put into it — an achievement that would have extraordinary energy and defense ...