COLUMBUS, Ohio – New research shows that loss of a gene called NFKBIA promotes the growth of glioblastoma multiforme, the most common and deadly form of brain cancer, and suggests that therapies that stabilize this gene may improve survival for certain glioblastoma patients. The study was published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine. "We show that NFKBIA status may be an independent predictor of survival in certain patients with glioblastoma," says senior coauthor Dr. Arnab Chakravarti, chair and professor of Radiation Oncology and co-director of the Brain ...

Boston, MA (January 5, 2010) — For parents wanting to reduce the negative influence of TV on their children, the first step is normally to switch off the television set. But a new study suggests that might not be enough. It turns out indirect media exposure, i.e., having friends who watch a lot of TV, might be even more damaging to a teenager's body image. Researchers from Harvard Medical School's Department of Global Health and Social Medicine examined the link between media consumption and eating disorders among adolescent girls in Fiji. What they found was surprising. ...

INDIANAPOLIS – A simpler form of testing individuals with risk factors for diabetes could improve diabetes prevention efforts by substantially increasing the number of individuals who complete testing and learn whether or not they are likely to develop diabetes. Approximately 60 million Americans, one-third of the adult population, are pre-diabetic. Thirty percent of these individuals will develop Type 2 diabetes in less than a decade, yet most don't know they are at high risk for the disease. A study published in the January 2011 issue of the American Journal of Preventive ...

Mount Sinai researchers coordinating the largest clinical study to date of "Sarcoid Like" Granulomatous Pulmonary Disease in World Trade Center (WTC) responders have found that the rate of the condition was increased in this group as compared to the records of pre-9/11 FDNY personnel. The study is published online in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine. The Mount Sinai researchers studied almost 20,000 responders who had an initial exam in the Mount Sinai World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program between July 2002 and September 2007. Overall ...

Spartanburg, S.C., USA, 6 January, 2010 – Researchers at Wofford College discovered that a Border Collie comprehends the names of over 1000 objects, differentiating between names of objects and orders to fetch them. This research deepens the findings of researchers in Germany, who had discovered a dog that knew the names of a couple of hundred objects. Important questions were left open as to how far a dog could go, and whether the dog really understood that the object names were nouns and not commands to retrieve the object. John Pilley and Alliston Reid answered two ...

The Moon, Earth's closest neighbor, has long been studied to help us better understand our own planet. Of particular interest is the lunar interior, which could hold clues to its ancient origins. In an attempt to extract information on the very deep interior of the Moon, a team of NASA-led researchers applied new technology to old data. Apollo seismic data was reanalyzed using modern methodologies and detected what many scientists have predicted: the Moon has a core. According to the team's findings, published Jan. 6 in the online edition of Science, the Moon possesses ...

Show enthusiasm, ask questions and bring copies of a resume. These are just a handful of the most common interview tips for job seekers, but a person's posture may also be a deciding factor for whether they land a coveted position – even when the person on the other side of the desk is in a more powerful role. According to new research from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, posture plays an important role in determining whether people act as though they are really in charge. The research finds that "posture expansiveness," or positioning oneself ...

Ibn al-Haytham's 11th-century Book of Optics, which was published exactly 1000 years ago, is often cited alongside Newton's Principia as one of the most influential books in physics. Yet very little is known about the writer, considered by many to be the father of modern optics. January's Physics World features a fanciful re-imagining of the 10-year period in the life of the medieval Muslim polymath, written by Los Angeles-based science writer Jennifer Ouellette. The feature covers the time when al-Haytham -- banished from society and deprived of books -- came up with ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Young people may crave boosts to their self-esteem a little too much, new research suggests. Researchers found that college students valued boosts to their self-esteem more than any other pleasant activity they were asked about, including sex, favorite foods, drinking alcohol, seeing a best friend or receiving a paycheck. "It is somewhat surprising how this desire to feel worthy and valuable trumps almost any other pleasant activity you can imagine," said Brad Bushman, lead author of the research and professor of communication and psychology at The ...

AMES, Iowa – Michael Kessler has worked with polymers that repair themselves when they crack. And he's worked with polymers made from vegetable oils. Now he's working to combine the two technologies. Kessler, an Iowa State University associate professor of materials science and engineering and an associate of the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory, is researching and developing biorenewable polymers capable of healing themselves as they degrade and crack. "If successful, the results of this research will provide biorenewable alternatives to petroleum-based ...

VIDEO: Extracting mitochondria from a human cell (larger object on bottom right) is a tricky process. NIST researchers recently developed techniques that can surgically remove these tiny cellular engines, potentially enabling... Click here for more information. Medical researchers who crave a means of exploring the genetic culprits behind a host of neuromuscular disorders may have just had their wish granted by a team working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology ...

Brain scans of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have shown for the first time why people affected by the condition sometimes have difficulty in concentrating. The study, by experts at The University of Nottingham, may explain why parents often say that their child can maintain concentration when they are doing something that interests them, but struggles with boring tasks. Using a 'Whac-a-Mole' style game, researchers from the Motivation, Inhibition and Development in ADHD Study (MIDAS) group found evidence that children with ADHD require ...

Is the expansion of the universe accelerating for some unknown reason? This is one of the mysteries plaguing astrophysics, and somewhere in distant galaxies are yet-unseen supernovae that may hold the key. Now, thanks to a telescope calibrated by scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Harvard University and the University of Hawaii, astrophysicists can be more certain of one day obtaining an accurate answer. The NIST scientists traveled to the summit of Haleakala volcano in Hawaii to fine-tune the operation of billions of light-collecting ...

As the day draws nearer for the world to run out of the unique addresses that allow us to use the Internet—now predicted to happen by the end of 2012—researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have issued a guide for managers, network engineers, transition teams and others to help them deploy the next generation Internet Protocol (IPv6) securely. Guidelines for the Secure Deployment of IPv6 (NIST Special Publication 800-119), describes the features of IPv6 and the possible related security impacts, provides a comprehensive survey of mechanisms ...

Two new draft publications from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) provide the groundwork for a three-tiered risk-management approach that encompasses computer security risk planning from the highest levels of management to the level of individual systems. The draft documents have been released for public comment. Both publications are a part of NIST's risk management guidelines, which have been developed in support of the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), and adopted government wide to improve the security of government systems ...

In a groundbreaking achievement that could help scientists "build" new biological systems, Princeton University scientists have constructed for the first time artificial proteins that enable the growth of living cells. The team of researchers created genetic sequences never before seen in nature, and the scientists showed that they can produce substances that sustain life in cells almost as readily as proteins produced by nature's own toolkit. "What we have here are molecular machines that function quite well within a living organism even though they were designed ...

(PHILADELPHIA) Elevated fat and cholesterol levels found in a typical American-style diet play an important role in the growth and spread of breast cancer, say researchers at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson. The study, published in the January issue of The American Journal of Pathology, examines the role of fat and cholesterol in breast cancer development using a mouse model. The results show that mice fed a Western diet and predisposed to develop mammary tumors, can develop larger tumors that are faster growing and metastasize more easily, compared to animals eating ...

Madison, WI December 28, 2010 – The Australian Government National Water Commission funded a study to establish an approach to assess the quality of water treated using managed aquifer recharge. Researchers at Australia's CSIRO Land and Water set out to determine if the en product would meet standard drinking water guidelines. At the Parafield Aquifer Storage, Transfer and Recovery research project in South Australia, the team of scientists harvested storm water from an urban environment, treated it in a constructed wetland, stored it in an aquifer, and then recovered ...

Menlo Park, Calif. — The Crab Nebula, one of our best-known and most stable neighbors in the winter sky, is shocking scientists with a propensity for fireworks—gamma-ray flares set off by the most energetic particles ever traced to a specific astronomical object. The discovery, reported today by scientists working with two orbiting telescopes, is leading researchers to rethink their ideas of how cosmic particles are accelerated. "We were dumbfounded," said Roger Blandford, who directs the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, jointly located at ...

An international, NOAA-led research team took a significant step forward in understanding the atmosphere's ability to cleanse itself of air pollutants and some other gases, except carbon dioxide. The issue has been controversial for many years, with some studies suggesting the self-cleaning power of the atmosphere is fragile and sensitive to environmental changes, while others suggest greater stability. And what researchers are finding is that the atmosphere's self-cleaning capacity is rather stable. New analysis published online today in the journal Science shows that ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Calling the results "extremely surprising," researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara and Texas A&M University report that methane gas concentrations in the Gulf of Mexico have returned to near normal levels only months after a massive release occurred following the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion. Findings from the research study, led by oceanographers John Kessler of Texas A&M and David Valentine of UCSB, were published today in Science Xpress, in advance of their publication in the journal Science. The findings show ...

AMES, Iowa – An international team of scientists has released data indicating that greenhouse gas uptake by continents is less than previously thought because of methane emissions from freshwater areas. John Downing, an Iowa State University professor in the ecology, evolution and organismal biology department, is part of an international team that concluded that methane release from inland waters is higher than previous estimates. The study, published in the journal Science, indicates that methane gas release from freshwater areas changes the net absorption of greenhouse ...

CHICAGO (January 6, 2011) – According to a report published in the December issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, surgery residents improved their knowledge of health care business concepts and principles with the use of a Web-based curriculum. The expectation is for residents to "demonstrate an awareness of and responsiveness to the larger context and system of health care, as well as the ability to call effectively on other resources in the system to provide optimal health care." However, consensus from residents is that they lack instruction and ...

Queen's University Classics professor emeritus Ross Kilpatrick believes the Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, incorporates images inspired by the Roman poet Horace and Florentine poet Petrarch. The technique of taking a passage from literature and incorporating it into a work of art is known as 'invention' and was used by many Renaissance artists. "The composition of the Mona Lisa is striking. Why does Leonardo have an attractive woman sitting on a balcony, while in the background there is an entirely different world that is vast and barren?" says Dr. Kilpatrick. ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A new University of Florida study following the evolution of lice shows modern humans started wearing clothes about 170,000 years ago, a technology which enabled them to successfully migrate out of Africa. Principal investigator David Reed, associate curator of mammals at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus, studies lice in modern humans to better understand human evolution and migration patterns. His latest five-year study used DNA sequencing to calculate when clothing lice first began to diverge genetically from human head lice. ...