A patient's body mass index (BMI) may not be the only factor at play when a physician diagnoses a patient as obese. According to a new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the diagnosis could also depend on the weight of your physician. Researchers examined the impact of physician BMI on obesity care and found that physicians with a normal BMI, as compared to overweight and obese physicians, were more likely to engage their obese patients in weight loss discussions (30 percent vs. 18 percent) and more likely to diagnose a patient ...

DETROIT – Performing CT scans in the emergency department for patients experiencing dizziness may not be worth the expense – an important finding from Henry Ford Hospital researchers as hospitals across the country look for ways to cut costs without sacrificing patient care. According to the Henry Ford study, less than 1 percent of the CT scans performed in the emergency department revealed a more serious underlying cause for dizziness – intracranial bleeding or stroke – that required intervention. The findings suggest that it may be more cost effective for hospitals ...

The earth is alive, asserts a revolutionary scientific theory of life emerging from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. The trans-disciplinary theory demonstrates that purportedly inanimate, non-living objects—for example, planets, water, proteins, and DNA—are animate, that is, alive. With its broad explanatory power, applicable to all areas of science and medicine, this novel paradigm aims to catalyze a veritable renaissance. Erik Andrulis, PhD, assistant professor of molecular biology and microbiology, advanced his controversial framework in his manuscript ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new study comparing the carbon-holding power of freshwater wetlands has produced measurements suggesting that wetlands in temperate regions are more valuable as carbon sinks than current policies imply, according to researchers. The study compared several wetlands at two Ohio wetland sites: one composed of mostly stagnant water and one characterized by water regularly flowing through it. The study showed that the stagnant wetland had an average carbon storage rate per year that is almost twice as high as the carbon storage rate of the flow-through wetland. In ...

Researchers at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada have identified a possible cause for the loss of a tumour suppressor gene (known as PTEN) that can lead to the development of more aggressive forms of prostate cancer. "This discovery gives us a greater understanding of how aggressive prostate cancer develops because we now have some insight into the mechanism by which the PTEN gene is destroyed," says Jeremy Squire, a professor in the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine. PTEN is one of a small class of tumor suppressor genes that closely regulates the ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – Does antimatter behave differently in gravity than matter? Physicists at the University of California, Riverside have set out to determine the answer. Should they find it, it could explain why the universe seems to have no antimatter and why it is expanding at an ever increasing rate. In the lab, the researchers took the first step towards measuring the free fall of "positronium" – a bound state between a positron and an electron. The positron is the antimatter version of the electron. It has identical mass to the electron, but a positive charge. ...

Asian women who consumed an average of 200 milligrams or more of caffeine a day—the equivalent of roughly two cups of coffee—had elevated estrogen levels when compared to women who consumed less, according to a study of reproductive age women by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and other institutions. However, white women who consumed 200 milligrams or more of caffeine a day had slightly lower estrogen levels than women who consumed less. Black women who consumed 200 milligrams or more of caffeine a day were found to have elevated estrogen levels, but ...

NEW YORK – January 26, 2012 – When a firm experiences a negative shock – e.g. a drop in revenues, loss of the CEO – it will face difficulties when raising new debt for many reasons. The most obvious reason for this difficulty is that the fundamentals of the firm are weaker and lenders recognize that there is less chance the firm can generate the necessary cash flows to repay the loan. Another primary reason is that a lender may worry that the bad news will scare off other creditors and will drive the firm into bankruptcy. This leads to the possibility of inefficient "creditor ...

Bethesda, MD – In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama presented the nation with a new economic blueprint which includes maintaining our commitment to funding research and development that can improve our quality of life. Noting that "innovation also demands basic research," the President urged Congress not to gut investments in the nation's research budgets. He also pointed out that students come from all over the world to train at American research institutions. "Don't let other countries win the race for the future. Support the same kind of research ...

Montreal, January 26, 2011 – 'Stand by me' is a common refrain when it comes to friendship but new research from Concordia University proves that the concept goes beyond pop music: keeping friends close has real physiological and psychological benefits. The presence of a best friend directly affects children going through negative experiences, as reported in the recent Concordia-based study, which was published in the journal Developmental Psychology and conducted with the collaboration of researchers at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and the University ...

DURHAM, N.H. – People with disabilities trying to find employment in the U.S. hospitality industry face employers who are often reluctant to hire them because of preconceived notions that they cannot do the job and that they are more costly to employ that people without disabilities, according to new research from the University of New Hampshire. UNH researchers Andrew Houtenville, associate professor of economics and research director of the UNH Institute on Disability, and Valentini Kalargyrou, assistant professor of hospitality management, analyzed data from 320 ...

In a study that holds major implications for breast cancer research as well as basic cell biology, scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have discovered a rotational motion that plays a critical role in the ability of breast cells to form the spherical structures in the mammary gland known as acini. This rotation, which the researchers call "CAMo," for coherent angular motion, is necessary for the cells to form spheres. Without CAMo, the cells do not form spheres, which can lead to random motion, loss ...

MIT researchers have discovered that certain photosynthetic ocean bacteria need to beware of viruses bearing gifts: These viruses are really con artists carrying genetic material taken from their previous bacterial hosts that tricks the new host into using its own machinery to activate the genes, a process never before documented in any virus-bacteria relationship. The con occurs when a grifter virus injects its DNA into a bacterium living in a phosphorus-starved region of the ocean. Such bacteria, stressed by the lack of phosphorus (which they use as a nutrient), have ...

Lab scientists and international collaborators have created the shortest, purest X-ray laser pulses ever achieved, fulfilling a 45-year-old prediction and ultimately opening the door to new medicines, devices and materials. The researchers, reporting today (Jan. 26) in Nature, aimed radiation from Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), located at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), at a cell containing neon gas, setting off an avalanche of X-ray emissions to create a new "atomic X-ray laser." "X-rays give us a penetrating view into the world of atoms and ...

GALVESTON, Jan. 26, 2012 – Discoveries made in some underwater caves by Texas &M University at Galveston researchers in the Bahamas could provide clues about how ocean life formed on Earth millions of years ago, and perhaps give hints of what types of marine life could be found on distant planets and moons. Tom Iliffe, professor of marine biology at the Texas A&M-Galveston campus, and graduate student Brett Gonzalez of Trabuco Canyon, Calif., examined three "blue holes" in the Bahamas and found that layers of bacterial microbes exists in all three, but each cave had specialized ...

PASADENA, Calif.—A key feature of human and animal brains is that they are adaptive; they are able to change their structure and function based on input from the environment and on the potential associations, or consequences, of that input. For example, if a person puts his hand in a fire and gets burned, he learns to avoid flames; the simple sight of a flame has acquired a predictive value, which in this case, is repulsive. To learn more about such neural adaptability, researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have explored the brains of insects and ...

Could depression in adulthood be tied to a parent's level of education? A new study led by Amélie Quesnel-Vallée, a medical sociologist from McGill University, suggests this is the case. Drawing from 29 years of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79), Quesnel-Vallée and co-author Miles Taylor, an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Florida State University, looked at pathways between a parent's education level and their children's education level, household income and depressive symptoms. The team found that higher levels ...

Irvine, Calif., Jan. 26, 2012 – Location matters for birds on the hunt for caterpillars, according to researchers at UC Irvine and Wesleyan University. Findings suggest that chickadees and others zero in on the type of tree as much as the characteristics of their wriggly prey. Unfortunately for caterpillars, munching on tree leaves that are healthy and tasty can dramatically boost their own risk of becoming food. Study results, published online this week in The American Naturalist, show that dining on the trees that are most nutritious for caterpillars – such as the black ...

Psychologists have found that buying life experiences makes people happier than buying possessions, but who spends more of their spare cash on experiences? New findings published this week in the Journal of Positive Psychology reveal extraverts and people who are open to new experiences tend to spend more of their disposable income on experiences, such as concert tickets or a weekend away, rather than hitting the mall for material items. These habitual "experiential shoppers" reaped long-term benefits from their spending: They reported greater life satisfaction, according ...

AMHERST, Mass. – University of Massachusetts Amherst fish biologists have published one of the first studies of deep-sea fish sounds in more than 50 years, collected from the sea floor about 2,237 feet (682 meters) below the North Atlantic. With recording technology now more affordable, Rodney Rountree, Francis Juanes and colleagues are exploring the idea that many fish make sounds to communicate with each other, especially those that live in the perpetual dark of the deep ocean. Though little is known at present about the significance of sounds made by deep-sea fishes, ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- Patients with head and neck cancers who have been treated with newer, more sophisticated radiation therapy technology enjoy a better quality of life than those treated with older radiation therapy equipment, a study by UC Davis researchers has found. The findings, presented today at the Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cancer Symposium in Phoenix, is the first of its kind to measure long-term quality of life among cancer patients who have undergone radiation therapy for advanced cancers of the throat, tongue, vocal cords, and other structures in ...

WASHINGTON, DC – Research physicians from Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center will present new data about a complex group of cancers known as head and neck cancers at the Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cancer Symposium, January 26 through 28, in Phoenix, Arizona. Should patients with HPV+ head and neck cancers receive less chemotherapy? Georgetown researchers are examining a hypothesis about whether HPV+ patients with a head and neck cancer should receive more or less chemotherapy. "Given the rising number of patients with HPV-caused head and neck ...

Boulder, Colo., USA - New GEOLOGY articles posted ahead of print examine the role of climate warming in the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, documentation of one of the first examples of land-based magnetic lineations similar to those that characterize sea-floor spreading centers, evidence that the disappearance of the Indus Valley Civilization around 2000 BC may be linked to a rearrangement of river drainage systems, fossil trees from the Cretaceous that reveal the true magnitude of past climate warmth, and more. Highlights are provided below. Representatives of the ...

Boulder, Colo., USA – The new issue of LITHOSPHERE is online now. Papers present evidence for the on-going re-shaping of the Rocky-Mountain–Colorado Plateau region by young uplift driven from below (mantle buoyancy), research in the Aegean Sea that documents a newly defined extensional fault system, and study of the hydrologic heterogeneity of faulted and fractured sediment layers with implications for similar rocks to affect the flow of moisture downward toward the spent nuclear fuel geologic repository at Yucca Mountain. Highlights are provided below. Representatives ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - The driving bass rhythm of rap music can be harnessed to power a new type of miniature medical sensor designed to be implanted in the body. Acoustic waves from music, particularly rap, were found to effectively recharge the pressure sensor. Such a device might ultimately help to treat people stricken with aneurisms or incontinence due to paralysis. The heart of the sensor is a vibrating cantilever, a thin beam attached at one end like a miniature diving board. Music within a certain range of frequencies, from 200-500 hertz, causes the cantilever ...