Tel Aviv — Most marketing departments work hard to establish a flawless reputation for their product or service. But new research from Tel Aviv University is showing that perfection is not all it's cracked up to be. Dr. Danit Ein-Gar of Tel Aviv University's Faculty of Management at the Leon Recanati Graduate School of Business Administration, working in collaboration with Baba Shiv and Zakary Tormala from Stanford University, has uncovered the "blemishing effect," a counterintuitive benefit of negative information. When utilized in the right way, she says, a small flaw ...

TORONTO, Ont., July 11, 2011—More patients are tested and treated for osteoporosis when fracture clinics have someone dedicated to screening for the bone disease, a new study has found. Those patients also do better when the clinic actually provides bone mineral density (BMD) testing or prescription drug treatment as part of its program rather than just referring fracture patients elsewhere. Researchers at St. Michael's Hospital led by Joanna Sale, a clinical epidemiologist, reviewed osteoporosis screening and management programs involving patients treated for fragility ...

Data Match Solutions today released DataMatch Tool 2.0, a very powerful software to match and merge databases. This software helps researchers, faculty and students to save valuable time and effort to collect and analyse data for their projects. Academics can now take their research to a higher level With DataMatch Tool 2.0 (DMT 2.0), researchers can link data from different sources easily and quickly and take their research to a higher level. Based on their experience in academic research and their knowledge in data collection and analysis, researchers from Data ...

An extract of the poisonous shrub Jatropha curcas acts as a strong painkiller and may have a mode of action different from conventional analgesics, such as morphine and other pharmaceuticals. Details of tests are reported in the current issue of the International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology. Omeh Yusuf and Ezeja Maxwell of the Micheal Okpara University of Agriculture in Umudike, Nigeria, explain how J. curcas, also known as the "physic nut" is a perennial shrub that grows to 5 meters in height and belongs to the Euphobiaceace family. It is native ...

Online consumers thought to be motivated primarily by savings are, in fact, often willing to pay a premium for purchases from online vendors with clear, protective privacy policies, according to a new study in the current issue of a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®). "The Effect of Online Privacy Information on Purchasing Behavior: An Experimental Study" is by Janice Y. Tsai, Serge Egelman, Lorrie Cranor, and Alessandro Acquisti of Carnegie Mellon University. The study appears in the current issue of the INFORMS journal ...

The author of this paper set out to determine the extent to which potential "errors" in many early epidemiologic studies led to erroneous conclusions about an inverse association between moderate drinking and coronary heart disease (CHD). His analysis is based on prospective data for more than 124,000 persons interviewed in the U.S. National Health Interview Surveys of 1997 through 2000 and avoids the pitfalls of some earlier studies. He concludes that the so-called "errors" have not led to erroneous results, and that there is a strong protective effect of moderate drinking ...

Paddington Brands announced today that it has launched its Agoston wine brand through Walgreens, the nation's largest drugstore chain. Bodegas Virgen del Aguila, the Spanish wine cooperative, confirmed Paddington Brands as the exclusive U.S. importer of Agoston wines. "When we first tasted Agoston, we knew this was a wine that would appeal to American consumers," said J. Smoke Wallin, chairman and CEO of Paddington Brands. "Year after year Agoston has been receiving 90+ points in the Penin Wine Rating Guide, which is Spain's equivalent to Robert Parker ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Psychologists at the University of Missouri have identified the beginning of first grade math skills that teachers and parents should target to effectively improve children's later math learning. A long-term psychology study indicates that beginning first graders that understand numbers, the quantities those numbers represent, and low-level arithmetic will have better success in learning mathematics through the end of fifth grade, and other studies suggest throughout the rest of their lives. "Math is critical for success in many fields, and the United ...

CINCINNATI—The alarm caused by bisphenol A (BPA) presence in reusable plastic bottles resulted in a recent industry change, producing products made with supposed BPA-free materials. Prompted by requests and concern from consumers, University of Cincinnati (UC) researchers wanted to see if these alternatives—including products made with stainless steel and coated aluminum—were truly giving the consumer an option free of BPA. In a study reported in the July 8, 2011 advance online edition of the journal Chemosphere, Scott Belcher, PhD, associate professor in the pharmacology ...

CHICAGO --- "I don't remember how I got home from the party." This could be a text from last night to one hard-partying college student from another. New research from Northwestern Medicine shows that 50 percent of college drinkers report at least one alcohol-induced memory blackout -- a period of amnesia -- in the past year during a drinking binge. Despite being fully conscious during such blackouts, students could not recall specific events, such as how they got to a bar, party or their own front door. Published in Injury Prevention, May 2011, the study found college ...

Teenaged boys from well-off Chinese families who say they are physically active and eat plenty of vegetables but few sweets are more likely to be overweight, according to a study led by researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC). The study, published in the July 2011 issue of the American Journal of Health Behavior, is one of the first to examine how weight among Chinese adolescents relates to factors like sleep duration, physical activity, diet and general demographics. Most of what the research team found runs counter to ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---A link between chemicals called phthalates and thyroid hormone levels was confirmed by the University of Michigan in the first large-scale and nationally representative study of phthalates and BPA in relation to thyroid function in humans. The U-M School of Public Health study also reported suggestive findings consistent with a previously reported link between a chemical called bisphenol-A and thyroid hormone levels. BPA is best known for its use in certain plastic water bottles and in the linings of canned foods. Researchers used publicly available ...

Networks of biologically-connected marine protected areas need to be carefully planned, taking into account the open ocean migrations of marine fish larvae that take them from one home to another sometimes hundreds of kilometers away. Research published today in the international journal Oecologia sheds new light on the dispersal of marine fish in their larval stages, important information for the effective design of marine protected areas (MPAs), a widely advocated conservation tool. Using a novel genetic analysis, researchers at the University of Windsor, Canada, ...

AURORA, Colo. (July 11, 2011) Bulimia nervosa is a severe eating disorder associated with episodic binge eating followed by extreme behaviors to avoid weight gain such as self-induced vomiting, use of laxatives or excessive exercise. It is poorly understood how brain function may be involved in bulimia. A new study led by Guido Frank, MD, assistant professor, Departments of Psychiatry and Neuroscience and Director, Developmental Brain Research Program at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, studied the brain response to a dopamine related reward-learning ...

The Alquity Africa equity investment fund targets double-digit returns from Africa's high-growth economies. Notably, it achieved a 10% return for investors in its maiden year. In addition, Alquity Investment Management, the fund's investment manager, has committed to donating a minimum of 25% of its net management fees on an ongoing basis to projects aimed at transforming lives across Africa. As the donation comes from Alquity's management fees, investors still receive their full investment return. The Alquity Africa Fund will be available to invest in via The deVere ...

SALT LAKE CITY – One-fifth of all patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension suffer with the fatal disease for more than two years before being correctly diagnosed and properly treated, according to a new national study led by researchers at Intermountain Medical Center in Salt Lake City. "For a lot of patients, that means the treatment is more difficult and the damage is irreversible," said Lynnette Brown, MD, PhD, a pulmonologist and researcher at Intermountain Medical Center and lead author of the study, which is published this week in the July issue of Chest, the ...

Hospitals across the nation are increasingly implementing palliative care programs to help patients manage the physical and emotional burdens of serious illnesses, but a new University of Georgia study finds that 82 percent of the state's hospitals do not offer palliative care services. "Most people will have some sort of extended illness at the end of their life, and many, especially frail elders, could benefit from this type of care," said study principal investigator Anne Glass, assistant director of the UGA Institute of Gerontology, part of the College of Public Health. ...

Studies by the University of Toronto's psychology department suggest that racism may impact some female minority groups more deeply than sexism. "We found that Asian women take racism more personally and find it more depressing than sexism," said lead author and doctoral student Jessica Remedios. "In order to understand the consequences for people who encounter prejudice, we must consider the type of prejudice they are facing," says Remedios. In one study, 66 participants of Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Taiwanese and Japanese descent were assigned one of three hypothetical ...

LEXINGTON, Ky. − A team of researchers led by University of Kentucky College of Agriculture Professor Joe Chappell is making a connection from prehistoric times to the present that could result in being able to genetically create a replacement for oil and coal shale deposits. This could have fundamental implications for the future of the earth's energy supply. Tom Niehaus, completing his doctorate in the Chappell laboratory; Shigeru Okada, a sabbatical professor from the aquatic biosciences department at the University of Tokyo; Tim Devarenne, a UK graduate and ...

Toronto, ON - When it comes to how they respond to the environment, trees may not be that different from humans. Recent studies showed that even genetically identical human twins can have a different chance of getting a disease. This is because each twin has distinct personal experiences through their lifetime. It turns out that the same is likely true for forest trees as well, according to new research from the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC). "The findings were really quite stunning," says Malcolm Campbell, a biologist and lead author of the study. "People ...

A genome-wide survey by researchers at The Wistar Institute shows how our cells create alternate versions of mRNA transcripts by altering how they "read" DNA. Many genes are associated with multiple gene promoters, the researchers say, which is the predominant way multiple variants of a given gene, for example, can be made with the same genetic instructions. Their findings, which appear in the journal Genome Research, available online now, show how genes are read in developing and adult brains, and identify the changes in reading DNA that accompany brain development. ...

Researchers at the NYU Cancer Institute, an NCI-designated cancer center at NYU Langone Medical Center, identified for the first time the key role specific microRNAs (miRNAs) play in melanoma metastasis to simultaneously cause cancer cells to invade and immunosuppress the human body's ability to fight abnormal cells. The new study is published in the July 11, 2011 issue of the journal Cancer Cell. Researchers performed a miRNA analysis of human melanoma tissues, including primary and metastatic tumors. They found in both sets of tumor cells significantly high levels ...

Researchers from Rigshospitalet – Copenhagen University Hospital – and the University of Copenhagen have discovered why malaria parasites are able to hide from the immune defences of expectant mothers, allowing the parasite to attack the placenta. The discovery is an important part of the efforts researchers are making to understand this frequently fatal disease and to develop a vaccine. Staff member at CMP. Photo: Lars Hviid"We have found one likely explanation for the length of time it takes for the expectant mother's immune defences to discover the infection in the ...

PITTSBURGH, July 11 – A new method for scoring the severity of illness for patients after cardiac arrest may help to predict their outcomes, according to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Most importantly, their findings, published in the early online version of Resuscitation, also show that none of the severity categories rules out the potential for a patient's recovery. "Traditionally, we have used historical or event-related information, such as initial cardiac rhythm or whether someone witnessed the collapse, to categorize these patients ...

Rockville, Md. — Using owls as a model, a new research study reveals the advantage of stereopsis, commonly referred to as stereovision, is its ability to discriminate between objects and background; not in perceiving absolute depth. The findings were published in a recent Journal of Vision article, Owls see in stereo much like humans do. The purpose of the study, which was conducted at RWTH Aachen (Germany) and Radboud University (Nijmegen, Netherlands), was to uncover how depth perception came into existence during the course of evolution. "The reason why studying ...