State governments, including California as well as others in Canada and the United Kingdom, pour hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into major motion pictures that depict smoking -- leading to thousands of new teen smokers every year, a University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) researcher has found. According to a survey published in PLoS Medicine, those subsidies, along with government inaction on stricter ratings for movies that depict smoking, also promote youth smoking and undermine tobacco control efforts. In California, approximately 70 percent of all ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – 79 million American adults have prediabetes and will likely develop diabetes later in life, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As the number of people diagnosed with diabetes continues to grow, researchers are focusing on discovering why the prevalence of the disease is increasing. John Thyfault, an assistant professor in MU's departments of Nutrition and Exercise Physiology and Internal Medicine, has found that ceasing regular physical activity impairs glycemic control (control of blood sugar levels), suggesting that inactivity ...

Until the last twenty years or so, most creditors didn't bother trying to collecting on old debts because the payments they received were rarely worth the trouble it took to collect them. Times have changed, however, and collecting on past due accounts is now a robust and highly profitable industry. For consumers, the rise of the debt collection industry means that that even very old debts can be extremely difficult to leave behind. Even if an original creditor gives up on trying to collect on a debt, it may sell the debt to a collection agency for a fraction of the ...

An extreme form of pregnancy-related nausea and vomiting known as hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) takes a heavy toll on thousands of women each year and can lead to hospitalization and pregnancy termination. But new research suggests pregnant women are not the only victims. A joint study by UCLA and the University of Southern California has found that children whose mothers suffered from HG while carrying them were 3.6 times more likely to suffer from anxiety, bipolar disorder and depression in adulthood than individuals whose mothers did not have the condition. HG sends ...

The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite has been busy measuring rainfall within Hurricane Irene, and forecasts call for between 5 and 10 inches in the southeastern and central Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands as Irene moves toward them today. It's been a busy season so far in terms of tropical storms with seven named storms already in the Atlantic basin; however, none of them have had a very large impact as they have either been small, short-lived or remained at sea and none of them have intensified into a hurricane until now. Irene, which originated from ...

Relatives of people with special needs often worry about who will care for their disabled loved ones when they are gone. One way that concerned family members can plan for their disabled relatives' futures is by creating a Special Needs Trust. But, people need careful estate planning to make sure that such trusts do not disqualify their loved ones from receiving public benefits, either at the time they establish the special needs trust or in the future should the trust beneficiary get money from another source. Special Needs Trusts A special needs trust is a flexible ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---A delicate balance of atomic forces can be exploited to make nanoparticle superclusters that are uniform in size---an attribute that's important for many nanotech applications but hard to accomplish, University of Michigan researchers say. The same type of forces are at work bringing the building blocks of viruses together, and the inorganic supercluster structures in this research are in many ways similar to viruses. U-M chemical engineering professors Nicholas Kotov and Sharon Glotzer led the research. The findings are newly published online in ...

Applying for and receiving Social Security Disability (SSD) benefits can take time. For those with serious, life threatening conditions, a delay can mean the difference between life and death. For this reason, the Social Security Administration (SSA) offers compassionate allowances, which allow the agency to target obviously disabled individuals for expedited benefits consideration based on readily available medical information. The SSA recently held a series of public hearings to determine the necessity of adding cardiovascular disease to its list of compassionate allowance ...

In March, a team of surgeons at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital announced the results of the amazing case of Dallas Wiens, a construction worker from Fort Worth, Texas, who received the most complete face transplant in the United States to date. The 25-year-od construction worker suffered extreme injures from severe burns to his head, when the boom lift he was operating struck a power line. The horrific construction site accident left him in a coma for three months. In the following two and a half years, he underwent 22 surgeries. The damage to his face was ...

Wheezy toddlers who have a sensitivity to house dust mites are more at risk of developing asthma by the age of 12, a University of Melbourne led study has shown. Children aged one – two years with a family history of allergy, who had a positive skin prick test to house dust mites, had a higher risk of developing asthma later in life. Results showed 75 per cent of these children had asthma at aged 12 compared to 36 per cent of children without a positive skin prick test. Lead author Dr Caroline Lodge from the University of Melbourne's School of Population Health said ...

What Google is attempting for books, the University of California, Berkeley, plans to do for the world's vertebrate specimens: store them in "the cloud." Online storage of information from vertebrate collections at the Smithsonian Institution, American Museum of Natural History, National Museum of Natural History in Paris, UC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ) and from hundreds of other animal collections around the world – or at least, all collections that include animals with backbones – will make them readily available to academic researchers and citizen ...

Most industries now examine systems, rather than individuals, for ways to improve performance. However, in a June 2011 article in Radiology, researchers reported that the American College of Radiology continues to rely on the outdated practice of peer review, a procedure that could put patients at risk for inadequate or unnecessary treatment and increase the risk of medical malpractice errors. The Downsides of Peer Review Programs In radiology's peer review system, radiologists examine peer reports for reading errors or misdiagnosis. Cincinnati radiologist David B. ...

Florida has a strong legal history of protection of home ownership via tax policy, probate laws and debtor's rights. The foundation of this is the Florida Constitution, which protects homeowners from the forced sale of or lien encumbrances on homestead property by creditors, except for three specific reasons: - Unpaid homestead property taxes and assessments - Mortgages for the purchase, improvement or repair of the homestead - Liens for maintenance, repairs or improvements to the homestead A recent change to one aspect of Florida's homestead law affects a surviving ...

PITTSBURGH—The classic symptoms of schizophrenia – paranoia, hallucinations, the inability to function socially—can be managed with antipsychotic drugs. But exactly how these drugs work has long been a mystery. Now, researchers at Pitt have discovered that antipsychotic drugs work akin to a Rube Goldberg machine— that is, they suppress something that in turn suppresses the bad effects of schizophrenia, but not the exact cause itself. In a paper published in this week's Journal of Neuroscience, they say that pinpointing what's actually causing the problem could lead to ...

TORONTO, Ont., Aug 23, 2011— Hearing dietary advice twice is enough for patients to get the significant benefits of lower cholesterol, according to a new study led by doctors at St. Michael's Hospital and the University of Toronto. "We're seeing more and more people want to take their health into their own hands," said Dr. David Jenkins, the lead author of the study and director of the hospital's Risk Factor Modification Centre. Dr. Jenkins is also Canada's Research Chair in Nutrition and Metabolism at U of T's Department of Nutritional Sciences. Jenkins and his team ...

It may come as no surprise to construction workers, but a new study indicates that the construction industry has the highest number of traumatic brain injuries of all sectors of the U.S. workforce. For a variety of work-related injuries, construction workers may be able to make claims for workers' compensation benefits. The study, The Epidemiology of Fatal Occupational Traumatic Brain Injury in the U.S., analyzed data from the Census of Fatal Occupational Injury and the Current Population Survey, and it was performed by investigators from the National Institute for Occupational ...

TORONTO, Ont., Aug. 23, 2011—Patients often do not renew prescriptions for their chronic diseases after they are released from hospital. The number is even lower if the patient spent time in an intensive care unit, according to a new study by researchers at St. Michael's Hospital and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Studies. "If you don't continue your medication after hospital, that can have consequences, such as hospital readmissions, visits to the emergency department and, in rare cases, death," said Dr. Chaim Bell, the lead researcher. Dr. Bell examined ...

Employing technology that reads the entire DNA code, researchers led by the Translational Genomics Research Institute and the Technical University of Denmark have pinpointed the source of a cholera outbreak in Haiti that killed more than 6,000 people and sickened 300,000. Paul Keim, Regents Professor of biology at Northern Arizona University and director of the TGen Pathogen Genomics Division, served as senior molecular biologist on the study, and NAU's Center for Microbial Genetics and Genomics also contributed. Using whole genome sequencing, which spells out the ...

California Among the Toughest States for Motorcyclists Although motorcyclists in California enjoy great weather and beautiful scenery, the state is still among the most dangerous for bikers, according to a recent survey conducted by Progressive Insurance. According to Dan Kamionkowski, the company's Motorcycle Product Manager, California ranked 42nd in the country for motorcyclists because of the state's high gas prices, population density and motorcycle accident rates, as well as the poor road conditions throughout the state. Thanks to these factors, California is ...

Toronto, Canada – Canadian researchers have found the first evidence that older brains get more benefit than younger brains from learning information the hard way – via trial-and-error learning. The study was led by scientists at Baycrest's world-renowned Rotman Research Institute in Toronto and appears online Aug. 24, 2011 in the journal Psychology and Aging, ahead of the print edition. The finding will surprise professional educators and cognitive rehabilitation clinicians as it challenges a large body of published science which has shown that making mistakes while ...

It is well established that a mood disorder can increase an individual's risk for substance abuse, but there is also evidence that the converse is true; substance abuse can increase a person's vulnerability to stress-related illnesses. Now, a new study finds that repeated cocaine use increases the severity of depressive-like responses in a mouse model of depression and identifies a mechanism that underlies this cocaine-induced vulnerability. The research, published by Cell Press in the August 25 issue of the journal Neuron, may guide development of new treatments for mood ...

The hippocampus is a brain structure that plays a major role in the process of memory formation. It is not entirely clear how the hippocampus manages to string together events that are part of the same experience but are separated by "empty" periods of time. Now, new research published by Cell Press in the August 25 issue of the journal Neuron finds that there are neurons in the hippocampus that encode every sequential moment in a series of events that compose a discrete experience. "The hippocampus is critical for remembering the flow of events in distinct experiences ...

The Eyes are about 50 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo (The Virgin) and are some 100 000 light-years apart. The nickname comes from the apparent similarity between the cores of this pair of galaxies -- two white ovals that resemble a pair of eyes glowing in the dark when seen in a moderate-sized telescope. But although the centres of these two galaxies look similar, their outskirts could not be more different. The galaxy in the lower right, known as NGC 4435, is compact and seems to be almost devoid of gas and dust. In contrast, in the large galaxy ...

A former payroll manager is suing the Princeton Club in a $10 million age discrimination and race discrimination lawsuit. As reported by the New York Daily News, 51-year-old Jo-Ann Garcia was forced out of job in favor of a younger, English-speaking employee by club management. She was fired in March after spending nearly 30 years working at the W. 43rd St. clubhouse. "Racial harassment or race discrimination in the workplace by anyone or against anyone is wrong and illegal," said New York civil rights violations lawyer David Perecman, founder of The ...

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania… A remarkably well-preserved fossil discovered in northeast China provides new information about the earliest ancestors of most of today's mammal species—the placental mammals. According to a paper published August 25 in the prestigious journal Nature, this fossil represents a new milestone in mammal evolution that was reached 35 million years earlier than previously thought, filling an important gap in the fossil record and helping to calibrate modern, DNA-based methods of dating the evolution. The paper by a team of scientists led by Carnegie ...