A polite act shows respect. But a new study of a common etiquette—holding a door for someone—suggests that courtesy may have a more practical, though unconscious, shared motivation: to reduce the work for those involved. The research, by Joseph P. Santamaria and David A. Rosenbaum of Pennsylvania State University, is the first to combine two fields of study ordinarily considered unrelated: altruism and motor control. It is to be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "The way etiquette has been ...

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – Rutgers researchers have identified a class of high-strength metal alloys that show potential to make springs, sensors and switches smaller and more responsive. The alloys could be used in springier blood vessel stents, sensitive microphones, powerful loudspeakers, and components that boost the performance of medical imaging equipment, security systems and clean-burning gasoline and diesel engines. While these nanostructured metal alloys are not new – they are used in turbine blades and other parts demanding strength under extreme conditions – ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – March 9, 2011) Despite dramatically improved survival rates for childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), relapse remains a leading cause of death from the disease. Work led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital investigators identified mutations in a gene named CREBBP that may help the cancer resist steroid treatment and fuel ALL's return. CREBBP plays an important role in normal blood cell development, helping to switch other genes on and off. In this study, researchers found that 18.3 percent of the 71 relapsed-ALL patients carried alterations ...

A team of researchers from the United States and Europe has identified a single genetic mutation in the CUBN gene that is associated with albuminuria both with and without diabetes. Albuminuria is a condition caused by the leaking of the protein albumin into the urine, which is an indication of kidney disease. The research team, known as the CKDGen Consortium, examined data from several genome-wide association studies to identify missense variant (I2984V) in the CUBN gene. The association between the CUBN variant and albuminuria was observed in 63,153 individuals with ...

VIDEO: Ganglion cells preferentially form synapses with those amacrine cells whose dendrites run in the direction opposite -- seen from the ganglion cell - to the preferred direction of motion (amacrine... Click here for more information. The sensory cells in the retina of the mammalian eye convert light stimuli into electrical signals and transmit them via downstream interneurons to the retinal ganglion cells which, in turn, forward them to the brain. The interneurons ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - Tomorrow's nonvolatile memory devices – computer memory that can retain stored information even when not powered – will profoundly change electronics, and Cornell University researchers have discovered a new way of measuring and optimizing their performance. Using a very fast oscilloscope, researchers led by Dan Ralph, the Horace White Professor of Physics, and Robert Buhrman, the J.E. Sweet Professor of Applied and Engineering Physics, have figured out how to quantify the strength of current-induced torques used to write information in memory devices ...

Satellites have been busy this week covering severe weather across the U.S. Today, the GOES-13 satellite and NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image of the huge stretch of clouds associated with a huge and soggy cold front as it continues its slow march eastward. Earlier this week, NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite captured images of severe weather that generated tornadoes over Louisiana. Today the eastern third of the U.S. is being buffered by a large storm that stretches from southeastern Minnesota east to Wisconsin and Michigan, then south through ...

International Panel Revises "McDonald Criteria" for Diagnosing MS -- Use of new data should speed diagnosis -- Publication coincides with MS Awareness Week An international panel has revised and simplified the "McDonald Criteria" commonly used to diagnose multiple sclerosis, incorporating new data that should speed the diagnosis without compromising accuracy. The International Panel on Diagnosis of MS, organized and supported by the National MS Society and the European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis, was chaired by Chris H. Polman, MD, PhD ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- In the fall of 1917, a new strain of influenza swirled around the globe. At first, it resembled a typical flu epidemic: Most deaths occurred among the elderly, while younger people recovered quickly. However, in the summer of 1918, a deadlier version of the same virus began spreading, with disastrous consequence. In total, the pandemic killed at least 50 million people — about 3 percent of the world's population at the time. That two-wave pattern is typical of pandemic flu viruses, which is why many scientists worry that the 2009 H1N1 ("swine") flu ...

Researchers from Rice University and Georgia Institute of Technology have found support for the theory that the brain has three concentric layers of working memory where it stores readily available items. Memory researchers have long debated whether there are two or three layers and what the capacity and function of each layer is. In a paper in the March issue of the Journal of Cognitive Psychology, researchers found that short-term memory is made up of three areas: a core focusing on one active item, a surrounding area holding at least three more active items, and a ...

Children who are taught how to think and act like scientists develop a clearer understanding of the subject, a study has shown. The research project led by The University of Nottingham and The Open University has shown that school children who took the lead in investigating science topics of interest to them gained an understanding of good scientific practice. The study shows that this method of 'personal inquiry' could be used to help children develop the skills needed to weigh up misinformation in the media, understand the impact of science and technology on everyday ...

A new study sheds light--both literally and figuratively--on the intricate brain cell connections responsible for anxiety. Scientists at Stanford University recently used light to activate mouse neurons and precisely identify neural circuits that increase or decrease anxiety-related behaviors. Pinpointing the origin of anxiety brings psychiatric professionals closer to understanding anxiety disorders, the most common class of psychiatric disease. A research team led by Karl Deisseroth, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and bioengineering, identified ...

DALLAS – March 10, 2011 – Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have identified a chemical compound that may eventually lead to a drug that fights cancers that are dependent on a particular anti-viral enzyme for growth. The researchers are testing the compound's effectiveness at fighting tumors in mice. If it is successful, they will then work to develop a drug based on the compound to combat pancreatic and non-small cell lung cancer, two cancer types in which this particular enzyme, TBK-1, often is required for cancer cell survival. "Our prediction is that ...

U.S. researchers who collaborate with international scientists are more likely to have their work cited than peers who do not utilize overseas expertise, according to a new study released this week by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. U.S. collaborators with international scientists are also more likely to receive greater recognition and produce work with greater impact. The study, "International Stem Cell Collaboration: How Disparate Policies Between the United States and the United Kingdom Impact Research," was authored by Kirstin Matthews, a fellow ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A new study led by a University of Florida researcher uses tracking data of three shark species to provide the first evidence some of the fish swim directly to targeted locations. Researchers found tiger and thresher sharks showed the ability to orient at large distances, with tiger sharks swimming in direct paths at least 4 miles away and reaching specific resource areas about 30 miles away, said lead author Yannis Papastamatiou, a marine biologist in the division of ichthyology at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus. A research ...

Neena Singh, MD, PhD and colleagues at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have identified the first disease-specific biomarker for sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD), a universally fatal, degenerative brain disease for which there is no cure. sCJD is one of the causes of dementia and typically leads to death within a year of disease onset. The finding, published in the March 9th issue of PLoS ONE, a scientific journal produced by the Public Library of Science, provides a basis for developing a test to diagnosis sCJD while patients are still alive. ...

A breakthrough by scientists at The University of Nottingham could provide hope for any allergy sufferers who have ever had to choose between their health and their household pet. The team of immunologists led by Drs Ghaem-Maghami and Martinez-Pomares in the University's School of Molecular Medical Sciences, and funded by the charity Asthma UK, have identified a cell component which plays a key role in triggering allergic responses to cat dander. The discovery furthers our understanding of how the body's immune system identifies and reacts to allergens, which could ...

Pregnant non-smokers who breathe in the second-hand smoke of other people are at an increased risk of delivering stillborn babies or babies with defects, a study led by researchers at The University of Nottingham has found. The study, published in the April edition of the journal Pediatrics, found passive smoking increased the risk of still birth by almost one-quarter (23 per cent) and was linked to a 13 per cent increased risk of congenital birth defects. The findings underline the importance of discouraging expectant fathers from smoking around their pregnant partners ...

Johns Hopkins Children's Center researchers have discovered that most children with severe cerebral palsy have starkly asymmetric pelvic bones. The newly identified misalignment can affect how surgeries of the pelvis, spine and surrounding structures are performed, the researchers say. The study will be published online on March 10 in the Journal of Pediatric Orthopaedics. Previous studies of patients with cerebral palsy have reported asymmetry above the pelvis and misalignment of the hips, but this new report, the researchers say, is the first one to show misalignment ...

From neurosurgery to bar code readers, lasers have been used in a myriad of applications since they were first introduced in the late 1950's. Now, with the work being done in Jeff Gelles' Lab at Brandeis University, researchers have developed a way to use lasers to study the splicing of pre-messenger RNA molecules, an essential process in creating proteins to sustain advanced organisms, including human life. This process of splicing is carried out by a cellular micro-machine called the spliceosome. "Understanding how these micro-machines function inside the cell is important ...

Providing further understanding of the link between low birth weights and obesity later in life, researchers found nutritionally deprived newborns are "programmed" to eat more because they develop less neurons in the region of the brain that controls food intake, according to an article published today in the journal, Brain Research. The study by a team of researchers at Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center (LA BioMed) suggests that overeating is programmed at the level of stem cells before birth when the mother has poor or inadequate ...

At Aegis, we are always on the forefront of using the latest technologies to create different types of applications and we would like to give an overview of the new technology from Microsoft called Silverlight. Silverlight is a comprehensive development platform that assist in the creation of interactive applications that may be web based, for desktops or even mobile handsets. Silverlight is a kind of free plugin and since it is based on .Net framework therefore it compatible across various operating systems, browsers and platforms. In a way Silverlight frees any kind of ...

BMW of North America, LLC, has announced its Best Dealership Awards for the year. It has also announced the annual "2011 Center of Excellence" honors, which are given to the top performing BMW dealerships in the US. The "2011 Center of Excellence" is awarded to the US dealerships that exhibit outstanding performance in the areas of customer satisfaction, outstanding brand representation and operational excellence. Out of the 338 BMW dealers nationwide, BMW awarded thirty two dealers for their extraordinary services and performance. Rick Hendrick Imports of Charleston, ...

Richard P Brown, MD, and Patricia Gerbarg, MD, integrative medicine experts, and co-authors of the award-winning How To Use Herbs, Nutrients, and Yoga in Mental Health Care (WW Norton) with Philip Muskin, MD, present two full-day workshops: "Renewing Your Spiritual Growth: What to Do When Your Practice Feels Stale" Thursday, March 24, and "Just Breathe! Part 1 and 2: Integrating Breathing Techniques into Psychotherapy," Friday, March 25, 2011 at the annual Psychotherapy Networker Symposium at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, 2500 Calvert St. NW, in Washington, D.C. Drs. Brown ...

The new website came as a necessary tool to inform Forex traders about the differences between the C2FX Forex Trade Sheet and forex signal service providers. "There is a difference between the two," says Ross Yamashita, partner of C2FX. "Forex signals are sent out randomly and are very hard to trade because you never know when they're coming through. With our Forex trade sheet, we send out our trade between 4:15 - 4:30 pm (Pacific Time) and the information is good for the next 24 hours." This advanced release gives Forex traders an edge above signals because they ...