Tobacco smoking is the leading preventable cause of death and disease in the U.S., with more than 400,000 deaths each year attributable to smoking or its consequences. And yet teens still smoke. Indeed, smoking usually begins in the teen years, and approximately 80 percent of adult smokers became hooked by the time they were 18. Meanwhile, teens who don't take up smoking usually never do. While studies have linked cigarette smoking to deficits in attention and memory in adults, UCLA researchers wanted to compare brain function in adolescent smokers and non-smokers, ...

In an effort to make it easier to build inexpensive, next-generation silicon-based electro-optical chips, which allow computers to move information with light and electricity, a University of Washington photonics professor, Dr. Michael Hochberg and his research team are developing design tools and using commercial nanofabrication tools. Silicon optical chips are critical to the Air Force because of their size, weight, power, rapid cycle time, program risk reduction and the improvements they can offer in data communications, lasers and detectors. The Air Force Office ...

A UCLA–University of Glasgow study of baseball tosses has found that body language is more likely to be judged as masculine when it seems to convey anger and as feminine when is seems to convey sadness. Researchers videotaped actors, both male and female, throwing baseballs in such a manner as to convey a range of emotions. Then, using technology that disguised the actors' sex, they presented the videos to observers and asked them to make judgments about the throwers' emotions and gender. "Even when observers received minimal information, they were able to discern ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Simply by eating the leaves of an invasive tree that soaks up river water, an Asian beetle may help to slow down water loss in the Southwestern United States. Two scientists from UC Santa Barbara, working with colleagues from the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, have published the first substantive data showing water savings that can result from using Asian beetles for the biological control of tamarisk, an invasive tree of western rivers. The study is now published online and in print in the journal Oecologia. "Widespread ...

Warming temperatures and melting ice in the Arctic may be behind a progressively earlier bloom of a crucial annual marine event, and the shift could hold consequences for the entire food chain and carbon cycling in the region. Scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, along with colleagues in Portugal and Mexico, plotted the yearly spring bloom of phytoplankton—tiny plants at the base of the ocean food chain—in the Arctic Ocean and found the peak timing of the event has been progressing earlier each year for more than a decade. The researchers ...

Swinglifestyle is rewarding Arizona swingers with a 1-year paid membership in appreciation for the lifestyle. For a limited time residents in Arizona will benefit with a no frills paid 1-year membership. The membership will include all the benefits of a regular one year account, a value of $69 dollars. New and existing free members will receive full access to all areas of the site including unlimited emails, chat, swingersboard, adult photo access and many more perks. Residents in Arizona are urged to participate in the limited time paid membership immediately. For local ...

Urbana, Ill.—Black holes are some of the heaviest objects in the universe. Electrons are some of the lightest. Now physicists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have shown how charged black holes can be used to model the behavior of interacting electrons in unconventional superconductors. "The context of this problem is high-temperature superconductivity," said Phillips. "One of the great unsolved problems in physics is the origin of superconductivity (a conducting state with zero resistance) in the copper oxide ceramics discovered in 1986." The results ...

Giving breastfeeding infants of HIV-infected mothers a daily dose of the antiretroviral drug nevirapine for six months halved the risk of HIV transmission to the infants at age 6 months compared with giving infants the drug daily for six weeks, according to preliminary clinical trial data presented today. The longer nevirapine regimen achieved a 75 percent reduction in HIV transmission risk through breast milk for the infants of HIV-infected mothers with higher T-cell counts who had not yet begun treatment for HIV. The study was presented at the 18th Conference on ...

Cincinnati, OH, March 3, 2011 -- Cerebral palsy is a neurodevelopmental condition that affects motor function, more often in children born prematurely. Because cerebral palsy is a result of brain injury received shortly before, during, or soon after birth, the number of infants being diagnosed with the condition is a good indicator of the quality of perinatal and neonatal care. An article soon to be published in the Journal of Pediatrics indicates that the rates of cerebral palsy have declined dramatically in the past 15 years. Dr. Ingrid van Haastert and colleagues ...

WASHINGTON, DC, March 1, 2011 — The discrimination that obese people feel, whether it is poor service at a restaurant or being treated differently in the workplace, may have a direct impact on their physical health, according to new research from Purdue University. "Obesity is a physiological issue, but when people have negative interactions in their social world—including a sense of being discriminated against—it can make matters worse and contribute to a person's declining physical health," said Markus H. Schafer, the doctoral student in sociology and gerontology who ...

Mike Luchen has been recognized for his success in providing solutions to businesses wishing to thrive and grow. Mike has developed the strategies and knowledge required to provide business with the Internet exposure they need reach the level of success they wish quickly and easily. Mike uses a holistic approach to successful marketing that include the use of SEO SEM online marketing advertising, public relations, social media marketing, Google Maps, Yahoo and local listings. Using the most technologically advanced strategies to generate response to your marketing efforts, ...

The depression and anxiety experienced by many women after a miscarriage can continue for years, even after the birth of a healthy child, according to a study led by University of Rochester Medical Center researchers and published online today by the British Journal of Psychiatry. "Our study clearly shows that the birth of a healthy baby does not resolve the mental health problems that many women experience after a miscarriage or stillbirth," said Emma Robertson Blackmore, Ph.D., assistant professor of Psychiatry at the Medical Center and the lead researcher. "This finding ...

A new study published in the International Journal of Andrology reveals that semen quality has significantly deteriorated during the last ten years in Finland, a country that previously was a region with high sperm counts. At the same time, the incidence of testis cancer in the Finnish population showed a remarkable increase, following the worrying trends observed in several countries in Europe and the Americas. Led by Jorma Toppari, MD, PhD, of the University of Turku, researchers examined three cohorts of 19 year old men between the years of 1998 and 2006. The men that ...

Here Come the Mobile Youth: a Generation of Change Agents Under 30 Key findings from the 65 market Mobile Youth Report by consultancy mobileYouth: - 1.2 billion youth own mobile phones, spending $400 billion annually. - 60% sleep with their phones. 81% would spend their last $10 on a mobile top-up before food. - 62% of purchase decisions influenced by peers not traditional paid media. - Research identified "super-influencers" - fans influencing up to 100 friends in the discovery and education process. Super-influencers were integral in creating change in the Middle ...

Imagine the vast, empty tundra in Alaska and Canada giving way to trees, shrubs and plants typical of more southerly climates. Imagine similar changes in large parts of Eastern Europe, northern Asia and Scandinavia, as needle-leaf and broadleaf forests push northward into areas once unable to support them. Imagine part of Greenland's ice cover, once thought permanent, receding and leaving new tundra in its wake. Those changes are part of a reorganization of Arctic climates anticipated to occur by the end of the 21st century, as projected by a team of University of Nebraska-Lincoln ...

DALLAS – March 3, 2011 – Patients with end-stage renal disease who opt for peritoneal dialysis experience no greater risk of catheter infection than those who undergo hemodialysis, a retrospective study at UT Southwestern Medical Center has found. Peritoneal dialysis is less costly, easier on the body and provides greater mobility than hemodialysis, the more common procedure in the U.S. "Patients actually survive better on peritoneal dialysis, have a better quality of life and the procedure is cheaper," said Dr. Ramesh Saxena, associate professor of internal medicine ...

Today was the last day of the 18th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, a key HIV/AIDS research meeting being held at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston from February 27 through March 2. Highlighted below are selected presentations from March 2nd on research supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), both components of the National Institutes of Health. Infant HIV Prevention and Treatment Karin Nielsen-Saines, M.D., ...

DVDNow Kiosks is a company that goes above and beyond in its dedication to the success of its kiosk owner-operators. From April 14th - 16th, 2011, DVDNow will host the first of many 'Boot Camp' Training Seminars at DVDNow headquarters in beautiful Vancouver, BC. The DVDNow Kiosks Boot Camp is a three-day workshop that will fully train kiosk owner-operators on how to most effectively launch, manage, and ultimately maximize the potential of their DVD rental kiosk business. The DVDNow Boot Camp will consist of intensive business training, in depth strategy sessions, and ...

Merkur Investments Corporation launches a new online magazine with a fresh concept. Founded in March 2010, Open Talk Magazine is now online for public viewing with minimal features, categories and articles. The plan is to gradually grow out the magazine being that it is planned to be quite large in size and cover unlimited topics and categories. Open Talk Magazine brings readers something different than most magazines in that its aim is to not be bounded to a specific targeted market, but rather "wide open" to all topics that cover most aspects of human life. It specializes ...

Computational scientists have a new weapon at their disposal. On February 1, the Electronic Simulation Monitoring (eSiMon) Dashboard version 1.0 was released to the public, allowing scientists to monitor and analyze their simulations in real-time. Developed by the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute at the University of Utah, North Carolina State University, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), this "window" into running simulations shows results almost as they occur, displaying data just a minute or two behind the simulations themselves. Ultimately, the ...

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Fans may think of Jimmy Connors as an "old school" tennis player, but according to a new ranking system developed by a Northwestern University researcher, Connors is best player in the history of the game. The rankings are published in PLoS ONE, a journal published by the Public Library of Science. Male tennis players who played in at least one Association of Tennis Professionals match between 1968 and 2010 were evaluated through network analysis, said Filippo Radicchi, author of the study. Ranking tennis players is a novel way to show how complex ...

Low self-esteem is associated with a greater risk of mental health problems such as eating disorders and depression. From a public health perspective, it is important for staff in various health-related professions to know about self-esteem. However, there is a vast difference between the research-based knowledge on self-esteem and the simplified popular psychology theories that are disseminated through books and motivational talks, reveals research from the University of Gothenburg. Current popular psychology books distinguish between self-esteem and self-confidence. ...

Diatoms account for a large proportion of the phytoplankton found in the water, and live both in the open sea and in freshwater lakes. By reviving 100-year-old spores that had laid buried and inactive in bottom sediment, researchers at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, have shown that diatoms are also genetically stable and survival artists. Recent research has shown that diatoms exhibit great genetic differences and that they occur in discrete populations, which means that they multiply sexually to a greater extent than previously believed. What makes diatoms special ...

Los Angeles, CA (February 28, 2011) Eating more tomatoes and tomato products can make people healthier and decrease the risk of conditions such as cancer, osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease, according to a review article the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, (published by SAGE). Of all the non-starchy vegetables, Americans eat more tomatoes and tomato products than any others. Researchers Britt Burton-Freeman, PhD, MS, and Kristin Reimers, PhD, RD of the National Center for Food Safety & Technology, Illinois Institute of Technology and ConAgra Foods, Inc., ...

Researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) are developing a solid composite material to help cool small, powerful microelectronics used in defense systems. The material, composed of silver and diamond, promises an exceptional degree of thermal conductivity compared to materials currently used for this application. The research is focused on producing a silver-diamond thermal shim of unprecedented thinness – 250 microns or less. The ratio of silver to diamond in the material can be tailored to allow the shim to be bonded with low thermal-expansion stress ...