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Science5 Jun 2012

Many new mothers spend more time on Facebook after giving birth

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A small, exploratory study suggests that many first-time parents - particularly mothers - actually increase the amount of time they spend on Facebook after the birth of their child. Results showed that 44 percent of mothers said their Facebook use increased after giving birth, compared to 27 percent who said it decreased and 29 percent who said it stayed the same. For fathers, 31 percent said their Facebook use increased, while 19 percent said it decreased and 51 percent said it stayed the same. The study, published in the July issue of the journal ...

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Science5 Jun 2012

Ancient jugs hold the secret to practical mathematics in Biblical times

Archaeologists in the eastern Mediterranean region have been unearthing spherical jugs, used by the ancients for storing and trading oil, wine, and other valuable commodities. Because we're used to the metric system, which defines units of volume based on the cube, modern archaeologists believed that the merchants of antiquity could only approximately assess the capacity of these round jugs, says Prof. Itzhak Benenson of Tel Aviv University's Department of Geography. Now an interdisciplinary collaboration between Prof. Benenson and Prof. Israel Finkelstein of TAU's Department ...

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Medicine5 Jun 2012

Healthy habits can prevent disease

Philadelphia, PA, June 4, 2012 – Five new studies provide evidence to support simple steps we can take to prevent illness and improve our overall health. In the June issue of The American Journal of Medicine, researchers report on fish consumption to reduce the risk of colon cancer; the effectiveness of hypnotherapy and acupuncture for smoking cessation; regular teeth cleaning to improve cardiovascular health; the effectiveness of primary care physicians in weight loss programs; and the use of low-dose aspirin to reduce cancer risk. Colorectal cancer is the third leading ...

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Medicine5 Jun 2012

Many physicians recommend unnecessary cancer screening for the old and sick

A significant number of physicians would recommend colorectal cancer screening for elderly patients with a severe illness, according to David Haggstrom from the Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center in Indianapolis in the US and his team. Such patients would not benefit from the procedure and, in fact, unnecessary screening may do more harm than good. Their work¹ appears online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine², published by Springer. Medical evidence does not indicate that colorectal cancer screening has any benefit among patients with limited life expectancy. ...

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Science5 Jun 2012

True Reishi's Unique Pure Reishi Oil Supplement Now Available in the U.S.

True Reishi (www.TrueReishi.com), a Hong Kong and San Francisco-based premium health brand, announced that True Reishi Plus is now available in the U.S. as the first 100% pure Reishi spore oil supplement cultivated from mushrooms grown on self-managed farmlands. Joining a growing medicinal mushrooms trend in the West, True Reishi Plus offers powerful health benefits related to longevity and boosting the immune system. "Reishi, also known as Ganoderma lucidum, is a rare herbal mushroom that has long been used by the elite and enlightened in Asia, so we're excited ...

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Medicine5 Jun 2012

Aging and breast cancer

It is well-known that the risks of breast cancer increase dramatically for women over the age of 50, but what takes place at the cellular level to cause this increase has been a mystery. Some answers and the possibility of preventative measures in the future are provided in a new study by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Mark LaBarge, a cell and molecular biologist in Berkeley Lab's Life Sciences Division, led a study in which it was determined that aging causes an increase in multipotent progenitors ...

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Science5 Jun 2012

Kerr & Wagstaffe Responds to Call for "Patent Reform"

Politico has released an article that considers the remaining work necessary for the favorable completion of patent reform. Patent industry executives are calling for the U.S. Patent Trademark Office (PTO) to make further changes in its processes, as private sector professionals are already remarking on the weaknesses of the patent reform law--which has not yet been implemented. Kerr & Wagstaffe, a law firm based in the San Francisco area of California, believes that a balance between fair and efficient PTO operational procedures is exactly what the industry is looking ...

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Medicine5 Jun 2012

Richest and poorest people in Toronto hospitalized for different reasons

For more information, a copy of the report or to interview Dr. Glazier, please contact: Leslie Shepherd Manager, Media Strategy Phone: 416-864-6094 or 647-300-1753 shepherdl@smh.ca St. Michael's Hospital Inspired Care. Inspiring Science. www.stmichaelshospital.com Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stmikeshospital ...

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Medicine5 Jun 2012

Study finds high risk of GI cancers among childhood cancer survivors

Survivors of childhood cancers are at an increased risk of another battle with cancer later in life, according to new research published online June 4 by the Annals of Internal Medicine. In the largest study to date of risk for gastrointestinal (GI) cancers among people first diagnosed with cancer before the age of 21, researchers found that childhood cancer survivors develop these malignancies at a rate nearly five times that of the general population. While there was some preliminary evidence that childhood cancer survivors develop GI cancers more often and at an earlier ...

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Medicine5 Jun 2012

OBGYN Specialist Marc A. Wilson, MD, Warns Women of Cardiovascular Risk Factors

SCAI's Women in Innovations (WIN) and Abbott's Women's Heart Health Initiative have created an OB/GYN screening program to help educate and prevent cardiovascular disease in women by bringing screenings tools and information to the gynecologist's office, according to a news article by The Wall Street Journal. The program discovered that one in nearly eight women has three or more cardiac risk factors, but do not know it, according to a study presented at the SCAI 2012 Scientific Sessions. OBGYN specialist Daniel P. McDonald, MD, and OBGYN specialist Marc A. Wilson, MD, ...

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Medicine5 Jun 2012

PTSD psychotherapy is enhanced with D-cycloserine

Philadelphia, PA, June 4, 2012 – Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is among the most common, distressing, and disabling medical consequences of combat or other extremely stressful life events. The first-line treatment for PTSD is exposure therapy, a type of behavioral therapy where patients confront their fears in a safe environment. Although it is an effective treatment, many patients still experience symptoms after treatment and there is a relatively high drop-out rate. In an effort to improve existing treatments, a new study appearing in Biological Psychiatry this ...

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Social Science5 Jun 2012

Facebook photos may reflect unconscious cultural differences

For millions of Facebook users, choosing which photo to use for an online profile is an important decision. Should it be lighthearted or professional, personal or more abstract? According to a study by researchers at the UT Dallas Center for Vital Longevity and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the photos we select may reflect individual preferences, but they also appear to reflect more deeply rooted, unconscious cultural differences. Previous research has shown that culture can affect not only language and custom, but also how we experience the world and process ...

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Technology5 Jun 2012

System improves automated monitoring of security cameras

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Police and security teams guarding airports, docks and border crossings from terrorist attack or illegal entry need to know immediately when someone enters a prohibited area, and who they are. A network of surveillance cameras is typically used to monitor these at-risk locations 24 hours a day, but these can generate too many images for human eyes to analyze. Now, a system being developed by Christopher Amato, a postdoc at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), can perform this analysis more accurately and in a fraction ...

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Space5 Jun 2012

Giant black hole kicked out of home galaxy

Astronomers have found strong evidence that a massive black hole is being ejected from its host galaxy at a speed of several million miles per hour. New observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory suggest that the black hole collided and merged with another black hole and received a powerful recoil kick from gravitational wave radiation. "It's hard to believe that a supermassive black hole weighing millions of times the mass of the sun could be moved at all, let alone kicked out of a galaxy at enormous speed," said Francesca Civano of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center ...

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Medicine5 Jun 2012

High blood caffeine levels in older adults linked to avoidance of Alzheimer's disease

Tampa, FL (June 4, 2012) Those cups of coffee that you drink every day to keep alert appear to have an extra perk – especially if you're an older adult. A recent study monitoring the memory and thinking processes of people older than 65 found that all those with higher blood caffeine levels avoided the onset of Alzheimer's disease in the two-to-four years of study follow-up. Moreover, coffee appeared to be the major or only source of caffeine for these individuals. Researchers from the University of South Florida (www.usf.edu) and the University of Miami (www.miami.edu)say ...

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Medicine5 Jun 2012

JEBDP looks at connections between preventive dentistry and public health

St. Louis, MO, June 4, 2012 – The dental profession needs to build a stronger connection between oral health and general health—not only for individual patients, but also at the community level, according to the special June issue of The Journal of Evidence-Based Dental Practice (JEBDP), the foremost publication of information about evidence-based dental practice, published by Elsevier. The special issue follows the usual format of JEBDP, comprising expert reviews and analyses of the scientific evidence on specific dental procedures. "Yet the coverage goes beyond a review ...

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Medicine5 Jun 2012

BUSM researcher finds link between brain signaling and renal function

(Boston) - Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) researchers recently uncovered a brain signaling pathway responsible for regulating the renal excretion of sodium. The findings appear in the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. Hypertension, or chronic high blood pressure, affects one-third of adults, significantly increasing cardiovascular risk and mortality. Approximately 50 percent of hypertensive patients are salt-sensitive and exhibit an increase in blood pressure following salt-intake. According to the researchers, little ...

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Medicine5 Jun 2012

New immune therapy shows promise in kidney cancer

BOSTON – An antibody that helps a person's own immune system battle cancer cells shows increasing promise in reducing tumors in patients with advanced kidney cancer, according to researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The results of an expanded Phase 1 trial presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual conference in Chicago, showed that some patients treated with a fully human monoclonal antibody developed by Bristol Myers Squibb had a positive response to the effort by the agent, BMS-936558, to prolong the immune system's efforts to fight ...

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Science5 Jun 2012

Underground search for neutrino properties unveils first results

Menlo Park, Calif. — Scientists studying neutrinos have found with the highest degree of sensitivity yet that these mysterious particles behave like other elementary particles at the quantum level. The results shed light on the mass and other properties of the neutrino and prove the effectiveness of a new instrument that will yield even greater discoveries in this area. The Enriched Xenon Observatory 200 (EXO-200), an international collaboration led by Stanford University and the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, has begun one of ...

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Science5 Jun 2012

Vaccinations of US children declined after publication of now-refuted autism risk

New University of Cincinnati research has found that fewer parents in the United States vaccinated their children in the wake of concerns about a purported link (now widely discredited) between the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine and autism. Lenisa Chang, assistant professor of economics in UC's Carl H. Lindner College of Business, found that the MMR-autism controversy, which played out prominently in the popular media following publication in a 1998 medical journal, led to a decline of about two percentage points in terms of parents obtaining the MMR vaccine for ...

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Physics5 Jun 2012

Physicists close in on a rare particle-decay process

PASADENA, Calif.—In the biggest result of its kind in more than ten years, physicists have made the most sensitive measurements yet in a decades-long hunt for a hypothetical and rare process involving the radioactive decay of atomic nuclei. If discovered, the researchers say, this process could have profound implications for how scientists understand the fundamental laws of physics and help solve some of the universe's biggest mysteries—including why there is more matter than antimatter and, therefore, why regular matter like planets, stars, and humans exists at all. ...

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Medicine5 Jun 2012

Emergency department algorithm may predict risk of death for heart failure patients

Physicians can reduce the number of heart failure deaths and unnecessary hospital admissions by using a new computer-based algorithm developed at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) that calculates each patient's individual risk of death. Published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the algorithm improves upon clinical decision-making and determines whether or not a patient with heart failure should be admitted to hospital. To bring this tool into the emergency departments, Peter Munk Cardiac Centre cardiologists are developing smartphone and web-based ...

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Science5 Jun 2012

June 2012 story tips from Oak Ridge National Laboratory

MATERIALS – Transparent performance . . . Windshields, windows, solar panels, eyeglasses, heart stents and hundreds of other products representing a multi-billion-dollar market are potential targets for Oak Ridge National Laboratory's thin-film superhydrophobic technology. Conventional commercially available products tend to lack transparency, suitable bonding capability or both, making them largely impractical, said Tolga Aytug, one of the developers. The ORNL product, based on glass, can be produced with manufacturing processes that are cost effective and easily scaled ...

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Medicine5 Jun 2012

Depression treatment can prevent adolescent drug abuse

DURHAM, N.C. -- Treating adolescents for major depression can also reduce their chances of abusing drugs later on, a secondary benefit found in a five-year study of nearly 200 youths at 11 sites across the United States. Only 10 percent of 192 adolescents whose depression receded after 12 weeks of treatment later abused drugs, compared to 25 percent of those for whom treatment did not work, according to research led by John Curry, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. "It turned out that whatever they responded to -- cognitive behavioral therapy, ...

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Medicine5 Jun 2012

Life expectancy prolonged for esophageal cancer patients

Reston, Va. (June 4, 2012) – For those with esophageal cancer, initial staging of the disease is of particular importance as it determines whether to opt for a curative treatment or palliative treatment. Research presented in the June issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine shows that physicians using positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT) can discern incremental staging information about the cancer, which can significantly impact management plans. In 2012, an estimated 17,500 people will be diagnosed with esophageal cancer and 15,000 will die from ...

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