Does being an intense mother make women unhappy? According to a new study by Kathryn Rizzo and colleagues, from the University of Mary Washington in the US, women who believe in intensive parenting - i.e., that women are better parents than men, that mothering should be child-centred, and that children should be considered sacred and are fulfilling to parents - are more likely to have negative mental health outcomes. The work is published online in Springer's Journal of Child and Family Studies. Parenting can be quite challenging and requires wide-ranging skills and expertise ...

Using piezoelectric materials, researchers have replicated the muscle motion of the human eye to control camera systems in a way designed to improve the operation of robots. This new muscle-like action could help make robotic tools safer and more effective for MRI-guided surgery and robotic rehabilitation. Key to the new control system is a piezoelectric cellular actuator that uses a novel biologically inspired technology that will allow a robot eye to move more like a real eye. This will be useful for research studies on human eye movement as well as making video feeds ...

When evaluating job applicants, employers want to be sure that they choose the right person for the job. Many employers, from consulting firms to federal agencies, will ask prospective employees to complete extensive tests and questionnaires to get a better sense of what those employees might be like in an office setting. But new research published in the July 2012 issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that a different factor – employee interests – may be a better way to predict who will perform ...

Obesity increases the risk of acute kidney injury (AKI) following cardiac surgery, according to a Vanderbilt study published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. Considered common after cardiac surgery, AKI represents a fivefold increase in mortality risk within 30 days after the procedure and is associated with longer hospital stays and a range of complications. The study, led by anesthesiologist Frederic T. (Josh) Billings IV, M.D., M.Sc., followed a sample of 455 cardiac surgery patients at Vanderbilt University Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital ...

MANHATTAN, Kan. -- Many patients seem to ignore prescription drug warning labels with instructions that are critical for safe and effective use, according to a study by a Kansas State University researcher working with scientists at Michigan State University. Consumers, particularly older ones, often overlook prescription drug warning labels in part because the labels fail to attract attention, said Nora Bello, an assistant professor of statistics at Kansas State University. Bello helped investigate the effectiveness of prescription drug warning labels to convey drug ...

Groundbreaking new research in the field of "evolutionary analysis in law" not only provides additional evidence that chimpanzees share the controversial human psychological trait known as the endowment effect – which in humans has implications for law – but also shows the effect can be turned on or off for single objects, depending on their immediate situational usefulness. In humans, the endowment effect causes people to consider an item they have just come to possess as higher in value than the maximum price they would have paid to acquire it just a moment before. ...

On this July 4th week, U.S. beachgoers are thronging their way to seaside resorts and parks to celebrate with holiday fireworks. But across the horizon and miles out to sea toward the north, the Atlantic Ocean's own spring and summer ritual unfolds. It entails the blooming of countless microscopic plants, or phytoplankton. In what's known as the North Atlantic Bloom, an immense number of phytoplankton burst into existence, first "greening," then "whitening" the sea as one or more species take the place of others. What turns on this huge bloom, what starts these ocean ...

An advanced telescope imaging system that started taking data last month is the first of its kind capable of spotting planets orbiting suns outside of our solar system. The collaborative set of high-tech instrumentation and software, called Project 1640, is now operating on the Hale telescope at the Palomar Observatory in California after more than six years of development by researchers and engineers at the American Museum of Natural History, the California Institute of Technology, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The project's first images demonstrating a new ...

VIDEO: Follicular dendritic cells originate in cells located in the walls of blood vessels. Click here for more information. Chronic inflammatory conditions are extremely common diseases in humans and in the entire animal kingdom. Both in autoimmune diseases and pathogen-caused diseases, the inflamed areas are rapidly colonized by antibody producing B lymphocytes – which organize themselves in highly structured areas called "lymphoid follicles". The scaffold of such follicles ...

Amsterdam, NL, July 5, 2012 – Sensory substitution devices (SSDs) use sound or touch to help the visually impaired perceive the visual scene surrounding them. The ideal SSD would assist not only in sensing the environment but also in performing daily activities based on this input. For example, accurately reaching for a coffee cup, or shaking a friend's hand. In a new study, scientists trained blindfolded sighted participants to perform fast and accurate movements using a new SSD, called EyeMusic. Their results are published in the July issue of Restorative Neurology and ...

Critics have pointed to fainting risks and subsequent auto accidents as reasons for concern when using drive-thru influenza immunization clinics, according to Ruth Carrico, PhD, RN, FSHEA, CIC, associate professor, division of infectious diseases, University of Louisville School of Medicine. A review conducted by Carrico and UofL faculty W. Paul McKinney, MD, FACP, Timothy Wiemkan, PhD, MPH, CIC and John Myers, PhD, MSPH found these fears to be unfounded. Since the beginning of an annual drive-thru immunization program initiated 1995 at the University of Louisville Hospital, ...

A gene whose mutation results in malformed faces and skulls as well as mental retardation has been found by scientists. They looked at patients with Potocki-Shaffer syndrome, a rare disorder that can result in significant abnormalities such as a small head and chin and intellectual disability, and found the gene PHF21A was mutated, said Dr. Hyung-Goo Kim, molecular geneticist at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Health Sciences University. The scientists confirmed PHF21A's role by suppressing it in zebrafish, which developed head and brain abnormalities similar ...

BOSTON (July 5, 2012) – Based on the results of a pooled analysis of 11 unrelated randomized clinical trials investigating vitamin D supplementation and fracture risk in more than 31,000 older adults, Bess Dawson-Hughes, MD, director of the Bone Metabolism Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (USDA HNRCA) at Tufts University, says higher doses of Vitamin D may be the most beneficial in reducing bone fractures in this age group. As part of the study, published today in The New England Journal of Medicine, Dawson-Hughes and colleagues ...

Researchers in India are developing a new technology that will prevent truck drivers and other road users from using their cell phones while driving. The technology based on RFIDs could also be integrated with police traffic monitoring. Abdul Shabeer of the Anna University of Technology in Tamilnadu, India, and colleagues point out that globally around 20% of fatal road accidents with trucks and other heavy vehicles involved the drivers of those vehicles using a cell phone in their hand at the time of the accident. "Dialing and holding a phone while steering can be an ...

Wi-Fi is coming to our cars. Ford Motor Co. has been equipping cars with Wi-Fi transmitters since 2010; according to an Agence France-Presse story last year, the company expects that by 2015, 80 percent of the cars it sells in North America will have Wi-Fi built in. The same article cites a host of other manufacturers worldwide that either offer Wi-Fi in some high-end vehicles or belong to standards organizations that are trying to develop recommendations for automotive Wi-Fi. Two Wi-Fi-equipped cars sitting at a stoplight could exchange information free of charge, but ...

Fluorine is the most reactive chemical element. That is why it is not found in nature in its elemental form, but only in compounds, such as fluorite – that was the accepted scientific doctrine so far. A special fluorite, the "fetid fluorite" or "antozonite", has been the subject of many discussions for nearly 200 years. This mineral emits an intensive odor when crushed. Now, for the first time, scientists from the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) and the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (LMU) have successfully identified natural elemental fluorine in this fluorspar. ...

Active Region 1515 has now spit out 12 M-class flares since July 3. Early in the morning of July 5, 2012 there was an M6.1 flare. It peaked at 7:44 AM EDT. This caused a moderate – classified as R2 on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's space weather scale – radio blackout that has since subsided. Radio blackouts occur when the X-rays or extreme UV light from a flare disturb the layer of Earth's atmosphere known as the ionosphere, through which radio waves travel. The constant changes in the ionosphere change the paths of the radio waves as they move, ...

Tropical "fireworks" happened in the eastern Pacific Ocean on July 4 as Tropical Depression 04E formed off western Mexico's coast and strengthened into Tropical Storm Daniel. NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite captured an image of TD 4E's rainfall and towering clouds as it passed overhead, and saw "hot towers" that suggested it would become a tropical storm. The TRMM satellite got a very good look at recently formed Tropical Depression 4E (TD 4E) at 1040 UTC (6:40 a.m. EDT) on July 4, 2012. The hot towering cumulonimbus clouds called "hot towers" ...

A new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder indicates air pollution in the form of nitrogen compounds emanating from power plants, automobiles and agriculture is changing the alpine vegetation in Rocky Mountain National Park. The emissions of nitrogen compounds to the atmosphere are being carried to remote areas of the park, altering sensitive ecosystems, said CU-Boulder Professor William Bowman, who directs CU-Boulder's Mountain Research Station west of Boulder and who led the study. "The changes are subtle, but important," he said. "They represent a first ...

VIDEO: This movie of the derecho that affected the Eastern United States in late June 2012 was created by imagery from NOAA's GOES -13 satellite. It begins on June 28 at... Click here for more information. As a powerful summertime derecho moved from Illinois to the Mid-Atlantic states on June 29, expanding and bringing destruction with it, NASA and other satellites provided a look at various factors involved in the event, its progression and its aftermath. According to ...

In the July 6 issue of Cell Stem Cell, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine describe how human epidermal progenitor cells and stem cells control transcription factors to avoid premature differentiation, preserving their ability to produce new skin cells throughout life. The findings provide new insights into the role and importance of exosomes and their targeted gene transcripts, and may help point the way to new drugs or therapies for not just skin diseases, but other disorders in which stem and progenitor cell populations are affected. Stem ...

New University of British Columbia research reveals that workers who witness bullying can have a stronger urge to quit than those who experience it firsthand. The findings of the study conducted by the Sauder School of Business at UBC indicate bullying's corrosive effects in the workplace may be more dramatic and costly than suspected. "We tend to assume that people experiencing bullying bear the full brunt. However, our findings show that people across an organization experience a moral indignation when others are bullied that can make them want to leave in protest," ...

A University of Saskatchewan-led international research team has discovered that aerosols from relatively small volcanic eruptions can be boosted into the high atmosphere by weather systems such as monsoons, where they can affect global temperatures. The research appears in the July 6 issue of the journal Science. Adam Bourassa, from the U of S Institute of Space and Atmospheric Studies, led the research. He explains that until now it was thought that a massively energetic eruption was needed to inject aerosols past the troposphere, the turbulent atmospheric layer closest ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Loss of a particular microRNA in chronic lymphocytic leukemia shuts down normal cell metabolism and turns up alternative mechanisms that enable cancer cells to produce the energy and build the molecules they need to proliferate and invade neighboring tissue. The findings come from a new study led by researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James). The study shows that microRNA-125b (miR-125b) by itself regulates many enzymes and other molecules ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Living in the guts of worms are seemingly innocuous bacteria that contribute to their survival. With a flip of a switch, however, these same bacteria transform from harmless microbes into deadly insecticides. In the current issue of Science, Michigan State University researchers led a study that revealed how a bacteria flips a DNA switch to go from an upstanding community member in the gut microbiome to deadly killer in insect blood. Todd Ciche, assistant professor of microbiology and molecular genetics, has seen variants like this emerge sometimes ...