Giving people the freedom -- but not too much freedom -- to express themselves may help designers build more interactive web portals and online communities, according to Penn State researchers. The researchers found that people increased their interactivity and developed a greater sense of community when they could write their own blog posts, change the look of their site and add gadgets, such as weather and news feeds, to personalized websites or portals. However, the researchers noted that interactivity and satisfaction dropped if participants had the option to choose ...

Sauropod dinosaurs could in principle have produced enough of the greenhouse gas methane to warm the climate many millions of years ago, at a time when the Earth was warm and wet. That's according to calculations reported in the May 8th issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. The hulking sauropods, distinctive for their enormous size and unusually long necks, were widespread about 150 million years ago. As in cows, methane-producing microbes aided the sauropods' digestion by fermenting their plant food. "A simple mathematical model suggests that the microbes ...

1. Evidence Review: Screening Women for Intimate Partner Violence May Have Benefits, Few Harms Intimate partner violence, or IPV, includes a range of abusive behaviors perpetrated by someone who is in an intimate relationship with the victim. Abusive behaviors may include physical violence, sexual violence, rape, and psychological aggression – all of which have immediate health effects on the victim. While victims and perpetrators can be male or female, women are disproportionately victimized (up to 5.3 million women are affected each year in the U.S.). In 2004, the ...

Philadelphia, PA, May 7, 2012 – While active monitoring of serum prostate specific antigen (PSA) levels in men over 50 has greatly improved early detection of prostate cancer, prediction of clinical outcomes after diagnosis remains a major challenge. Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have found that a genetic abnormality known as copy number variation (CNV) in prostate cancer tumors, as well as in the benign prostate tissues adjacent to the tumor and in the blood of patients with prostate cancer, can predict whether a patient will experience ...

The requirement for efficient mosquito mass-rearing technology has been one of the major obstacles preventing the large scale application of the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) against mosquitoes. However, according to a new article in the next issue of the Journal of Medical Entomology, scientists at the Untited Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have developed a larval rearing unit based on the use of a stainless steel rack that is expected to be able to successfully rear 140,000–175,000 adult mosquitoes ...

HOUSTON -- (May 7, 2012) – The deletion of part of a gene that plays a role in the synthesis of carnitine – an amino acid derivative that helps the body use fat for energy – may play a role in milder forms of autism, said a group of researchers led by those at Baylor College of Medicine (http://www.bcm.edu) and Texas Children's Hospital (http://www.texaschildrens.org). "This is a novel inborn error of metabolism," said Dr. Arthur Beaudet (http://www.bcm.edu/genetics/index.cfm?pmid=10579), chair of molecular and human genetics at BCM and a physician at Texas Children's ...

SEATTLE—The collaborative TEAMcare program for people with depression and either diabetes, heart disease, or both appears at least to pay for itself, according to a UW Medicine and Group Health Research Institute report in the May 7 Archives of General Psychiatry. Over two years, after accounting for the $1,224 per patient that the program cost, it may save as much as $594 per patient in outpatient costs. "Also, over the course of two years, people who received the TEAMcare intervention had a mean of 114 more days free from depression than did the people who received ...

Antipsychotic medications are increasingly prescribed in the US, but they can cause serious side effects including rapid weight gain, especially in children. In the first study of its kind, researchers at Zucker Hillside Hospital and the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research identified a gene that increases weight gain in those treated with commonly-used antipsychotic drugs. These findings were published in the May issue of Archives of General Psychiatry. Second-generation antipsychotics (SGAs) were used as the treatment in this study. SGAs are commonly used to treat ...

An intriguing clue to longevity lurks in the sexual maturation timetable of female mammals, Jackson Laboratory researchers and their collaborators report. Jackson researchers including Research Scientist Rong Yuan, Ph.D., had previously established that mouse strains with lower circulating levels of the hormone IGF1 at age six months live longer than other strains. In research published May 7 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Yuan and colleagues report that females from strains with lower IGF1 levels also reach sexual maturity at a significantly ...

STANFORD, Calif. — The cells that slough off from a cancerous tumor into the bloodstream are a genetically diverse bunch, Stanford University School of Medicine researchers have found. Some have genes turned on that give them the potential to lodge themselves in new places, helping a cancer spread between organs. Others have completely different patterns of gene expression and might be more benign, or less likely to survive in a new tissue. Some cells may even express genes that could predict their response to a specific therapy. Even within one patient, the tumor cells ...

PULLMAN, Wash.—A new study finds that fetal exposure to the plastic additive bisphenol A, or BPA, alters mammary gland development in primates. The finding adds to the evidence that the chemical can be causing health problems in humans and bolsters concerns about it contributing to breast cancer. "Previous studies in mice have demonstrated that low doses of BPA alter the developing mammary gland and that these subtle changes increase the risk of cancer in the adult," says Patricia Hunt, a geneticist in Washington State University's School of Molecular Biosciences. "Some ...

Philadelphia, PA, May 7, 2012 -- Like their healthy peers, children with disabilities may spend too much time in front of a video screen. For children with cerebral palsy (CP), this leads to an even greater risk of being overweight or developing health issues such as diabetes or musculoskeletal disorders. A group of scientists has found that video games such as Nintendo's Wii offer an enjoyable opportunity to promote light to moderate physical activity in children with CP, and may have a role to play in rehabilitation therapy. Their research is published online today ...

New research provides the strongest evidence to date that psychopathy is linked to specific structural abnormalities in the brain. The study, published in Archives of General Psychiatry and led by researchers at King's College London is the first to confirm that psychopathy is a distinct neuro-developmental sub-group of anti-social personality disorder (ASPD). Most violent crimes are committed by a small group of persistent male offenders with ASPD. Approximately half of male prisoners in England and Wales will meet diagnostic criteria for ASPD. The majority of such men ...

New research indicates that domestic horses originated in the steppes of modern-day Ukraine, southwest Russia and west Kazakhstan, mixing with local wild stocks as they spread throughout Europe and Asia. The research was published today, 07 May, in the journal PNAS. For several decades scientists puzzled over the origin of domesticated horses. Based on archaeological evidence, it had long been thought that horse domestication originated in the western part of the Eurasian Steppe (Ukraine, southwest Russia and west Kazakhstan); however, a single origin in a geographically ...

Scientists at the Universities of Birmingham and Warwick have shed new light on how sperm navigate the female reproductive tract, 'crawling' along the channel walls and swimming around corners; with frequent collisions. Research results published today (Tuesday May 8, 2012) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (PNAS) provide fresh insight into how sperm might find their way to the egg that will help to inform future innovation in the struggle to treat infertile couples. Scientists led by Dr Petr Denissenko, of the School of Engineering ...

Television viewing and unhealthy eating habits in U.S. adolescents appear to be linked in a national survey of students in the fifth to 10 th grades, according to a report published in the May issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. The study is part of the Nutrition and the Health of Children and Adolescents theme issue. Television viewing (TVV) by young people has been associated with unhealthy eating and food choices that may track into early adulthood. Young people in the U.S. fall short of recommendations for whole fruit, ...

A study of mothers and their toddlers suggests that mothers of overweight toddlers often had inaccurate perceptions of their child's body size, according to a report published in the May issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. The study is part of the Nutrition and the Health of Children and Adolescents theme issue. Feeding behaviors are influenced by perceptions of a child's body size and misperception of a child's size could lead to inappropriate feeding behaviors, such as encouraging a healthy-weight child to eat more, the ...

Biodiversity hot spots -- the world's biologically richest and most threatened locations on Earth -- and high biodiversity wilderness areas -- biologically rich but less threatened -- are some of the most linguistically diverse regions on our planet, according to a team of conservationists. "Results indicate that these regions (hot spots and high biodiversity wilderness areas) often contain considerable linguistic diversity, accounting for 70 percent of all languages on Earth," the researchers report in this today's (May 7) early online edition of the Proceedings of ...

An Australian school-based obesity prevention program for adolescent girls was not associated with statistically significant differences in body mass index (BMI) and other body composition measures, however the small changes may be related to clinically important health outcomes, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. The study is part of the Nutrition and the Health of Children and Adolescents theme issue. Obesity prevention is a global health priority because obese youth are at an elevated ...

Surveys of U.S. adolescents suggest that the estimated peak risk of using prescription pain relievers for extramedical use, such as to get high or for other unapproved indications, occurs in mid-adolescence, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. Physicians, other prescribing clinicians such as dentists, and public health professionals are aware of recent increasing trends of prescribing pain relievers. Previous research suggests an increased use of these drugs for extramedical use and ...

Cyara Solutions, a pioneer of next-generation premise and cloud solutions for testing, monitoring and simulation of interactive voice response (IVRs) and contact center systems and applications, today announced the recent expansion of their testing capacity with the addition of a U.S. data center in Sunnyvale, CA. The Cyara Solution Suite provides a complete suite of products for testing, monitoring and simulation of contact center infrastructure and applications including IVRs, IP Telephony, SIP deployments, PBXs, reporting, routing, call recording, desktop and CTI ...

Depressive symptoms that are present in midlife or in late life are associated with an increased risk of developing dementia, according to a report in the May issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, a JAMA Network publication. Nearly 5.3 million individuals in the United States have Alzheimer disease (AD) and the resulting health care costs in 2010 were roughly $172 billion, the authors write as background information in the study. "Prevalence and costs of AD and other dementias are projected to rise dramatically during the next 40 years unless a prevention or a cure ...

Among adults with depression and poorly controlled diabetes mellitus, coronary heart disease, or both, a collaborative care intervention incorporating a team-centered care approach is associated with improvements in depression-free days and quality-adjusted life-years, according to a report in the May issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, a JAMA Network publication. "Patients with depression and poorly controlled diabetes mellitus, coronary heart disease (CHD) or both have higher medical complication rates and higher health care costs, suggesting that more effective ...

BookWhirl.com gives birth to e-Publishing Revo to take publishing possibilities to a higher level with staple digital publishing packages. The company has been in the online book marketing services for almost five years. Today, BookWhirl.com has finally announced its expansion to the self-publishing industry. The e-Publishing Revo offers many opportunities to writers who want to publish their manuscripts in digital formats. Currently, the e-Publishing Revo offers two types of service packages: (1) e-Pub Lite and (2) e-Pub Pro. Both packages include the necessary elements ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Mayo Clinic and University of Oregon researchers have confirmed that a genetic factor called a repeating trinucleotide is a strong predictor of an individual's risk of developing the eye condition Fuchs' dystrophy. The findings were being presented today at the annual conference of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology in Orlando, Fla. Fuchs' dystrophy is an eye condition that occurs when the cells at the back of the cornea deteriorate, causing fluid buildup resulting in swelling and cloudy vision. Fuchs' can be inherited. Until ...