CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Although the effects of the controversial health care reform act will be somewhat muted for many older Americans, it will inevitably have enough of an impact that seniors will discover that there is plenty to like and dislike about the law, a University of Illinois expert on elder law cautions in published research. Law professor Richard L. Kaplan says the virtues of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 are a "mixed bag," and how it will affect any one person depends on that person's specific situation. "You have to expect some negative ...

An inadequate amount of sleep has been associated with higher risks of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and death. Now colon cancer can be added to the list. In a ground-breaking new study published in the Feb. 15, 2011 issue of the journal Cancer, researchers from University Hospitals (UH) Case Medical Center and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, found that individuals who averaged less than six hours of sleep at night had an almost 50 percent increase in the risk of colorectal adenomas compared with individuals sleeping at least seven hours per night. ...

Due to the recent economic crisis, an increase of health inequalities between socio-economic groups has been noticed in both developed and developing countries. The World Health Organization, the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme have all reported these inequalities and emphasized its importance and made this issue a priority. There is evidence that such inequalities not only affect general health, but have a particular impact on mental health. A new study, published in World Psychiatry, the official journal of the World Psychiatric Association ...

New research conducted with deaf people in Nicaragua shows that language may play an important role in learning the meanings of numbers. Field studies by University of Chicago psychologist Susan Goldin-Meadow and a team of researchers found deaf people in Nicaragua, who had not learned formal sign language, do not have a complete understanding of numbers greater than three. Researchers surmised the lack of large number comprehension was because the deaf Nicaraguans were not being taught numbers or number words. Instead they learned to communicate using self-developed ...

HYDROPOWER -- Fishy behavior . . . Proposals to install hydrokinetic turbines – like underwater windmills – in rivers across the U.S. are prompting questions about the environmental impacts of this new hydropower energy source. In response, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are investigating how electromagnetic fields generated by the turbines could affect the behavior of freshwater fauna such as snails, clams, minnows and sturgeon. "We know that certain marine organisms like sharks are sensitive to electromagnetic fields, but almost nothing is known about ...

Boulder, CO, USA - Highlights of articles set for the March issue of GEOLOGY (posted online on 3-4 February 2011) are provided below. Topics include marine ferromanganese crusts as potential mineral resources; CO2 emissions from volcanic lakes; deformation of the seemingly dormant Damavand volcano, northern Iran; a finding that relic chitin-protein complex plays critical role in the preservation of organic arthropod fossils; description and mapping of the 19 March 2008 Halema'uma'u crater eruption on Kilauea; and a study of the Cilaos deep-sea fan beneath La Reunion Island ...

Boston, Mass. – Nearly one-half of U.S. adults who use the Internet participate in social networks. While these increasingly include health-focused networks, not much is known about their quality and safety. In one of the first formal studies of social networking websites targeting patients, researchers in the Children's Hospital Boston Informatics Program performed an in-depth evaluation of ten diabetes websites. Their audit found large variations in quality and safety across sites, with room for improvement across the board. As reported online January 24 in the Journal ...

DALLAS – Feb. 8, 2011 – The popular drug dutasteride may not be a cost-effective way to prevent prostate cancer in men who are at elevated risk of developing the disease, according to findings by a UT Southwestern Medical Center researcher. In a study available in the January issue of Cancer Prevention Research, investigators found that the medication, at an annual cost of $1,400, is impractical when compared to the marginal impact on survival and quality of life in at-risk groups. The drug is indicated for the treatment of enlarged prostates but also is widely prescribed ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – This December marks the bicentennial of the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-12, which are the biggest earthquakes known to have occurred in the central U.S. Now, based on the earthquake record in China, a University of Missouri researcher says that mid-continent earthquakes tend to move among fault systems, so the next big earthquake in the central U.S. may actually occur someplace else other than along the New Madrid faults. Mian Liu, professor of geological sciences in the College of Arts and Science at MU, examined records from China, where earthquakes ...

The developed nations must invest in information and communications technologies (ICT) in the developing world not only the close the so-called digital divide but to encourage sustainable economic development and to create new markets for international commerce. Many observers have suggested that the gap between those with access to ICT and those without it is growing. But, all world citizens should have the opportunity to benefit from open access to ICT. The benefits are obvious to those given access in terms of education and opportunity, but ICT availability in developing ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Government regulators could more realistically assess the value of improving food safety if they considered the fact that consumers typically want to avoid getting sick – even if it means they have to pay a little extra for safer food, researchers say. In the world of food regulation, cost-benefit analyses are a primary tool for assessing the societal benefits of mandating more stringent – and more expensive – processing practices. In most cases, regulators determine a dollar value associated with pursuing new rules by estimating how many illnesses and ...

It's a common problem in the business world—throwing good money after bad. People cling to bad investments, hoping that more time, effort, and money will rescue their turkey of a project. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that changing people's mindsets can make them more likely to abandon a failing investment. "These situations happen all the time," says Assistant Professor Daniel C. Molden, of Northwestern University, who conducted the study with his graduate student Chin Ming Hui. "They happen ...

SALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 8, 2011 – Researchers at the University of Utah's Comprehensive Arrhythmia and Research Management (CARMA) Center have found that delayed-enhancement magnetic resonance imaging (DE-MRI) holds promise for predicting the risks of strokes, the third leading cause of death in the U.S. Their latest study on a novel application of this technology appears in the Feb. 15 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. (http://content.onlinejacc.org/cgi/content/abstract/57/7/831) The study included 387 patients who were treated for atrial fibrillation ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new study in the journal Cognition overturns a decades-old theory about the nature of attention and demonstrates that even brief diversions from a task can dramatically improve one's ability to focus on that task for prolonged periods. The study zeroes in on a phenomenon known to anyone who's ever had trouble doing the same task for a long time: After a while, you begin to lose your focus and your performance on the task declines. Some researchers believe that this "vigilance decrement," as they describe it, is the result of a drop in one's "attentional ...

The Journal of the American Medical Society ("Medical News & Perspectives", Jan. 19, 2011) featured the research of NJIT Associate Professor Sergei Adamovich, a biomedical engineer. Adamovich and his research partners, physical therapists Alma Merians, PhD, PT, and Eugene Tunik, PhD, PT, at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, have developed innovative robotic and virtual reality-based video game therapies to help stroke patients regain use of hands and arms. JAMA reported that the efforts of this team are making headway. Twenty-four patients who ...

VIDEO: Tagging and tracking leatherback sea turtles has produced new insights into the turtles' behavior in a part of the South Pacific Ocean long considered an oceanic desert. The new data... Click here for more information. Leatherbacks. They are the Olympians of the turtle world – swimming farther, diving deeper and venturing into colder waters than any other marine turtle species. But for all their toughness, they have still suffered a 90 percent drop in their population ...

RICHLAND, Wash. – Finding life on Mars could get easier with a creative adaption to a common analytical tool that can be installed directly on the robotic arm of a space rover. In a recent paper published online in the journal Planetary and Space Science, a team of researchers propose adding a laser and an ion funnel to a widely used scientific instrument, the mass spectrometer, to analyze the surfaces of rocks and other samples directly on Mars' surface. The researchers demonstrated that the combined system could work on the spot, without the sample handling that mass ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers are developing a new type of biological and chemical sensor that has few moving parts, is low-cost and yet highly sensitive, sturdy and long-lasting. The "diffraction-based" sensors are made of thin stripes of a gelatinous material called a hydrogel, which expands and contracts depending on the acidity of its environment. Recent research findings have demonstrated that the sensor can be used to precisely determine pH - a measure of how acidic or basic a liquid is - revealing information about substances in liquid environments, said ...

This press release is available in Spanish. U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists have come up with a way to detect pathogenic Escherichia coli and Salmonella bacteria in waterways at lower levels than any previous method. Similar methods have been developed to detect pathogenic E. coli in meat products, but the approach by the scientists with USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) represents a first for waterways. ARS is USDA's principal intramural scientific research agency, and this research supports the USDA priority of ensuring food safety. When ...

KNOXVILLE -- How do you measure charisma? That's the question UT professor Kenneth Levine seeks to answer. Much has been written in business management textbooks and self-help guides about the role that personal charisma plays in leadership. But according to a newly published study co-authored by Levine, a University of Tennessee, Knoxville, communications studies professor, until recently no one was able to describe and measure charisma in a systematic way. Levine said the large amount of academic literature on charismatic leadership never defined what it means to ...

Scratching deep beneath the surface, a team of researchers from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and three South Korean institutions have identified two distinct neuronal signaling pathways activated by a topical cream used to treat a variety of skin diseases. One pathway produces the therapeutic benefit; the other induces severe itching as a side effect. The findings, published in this week's early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, point to the possibility of designing future drugs that effectively treat ...

New Rochelle, NY, February 8, 2011—Successful intranasal delivery of stem cells to the brains of rats with Parkinson disease yielded significant improvement in motor function and reversed the dopamine deficiency characteristic of the disease. These highly promising findings, reported in Rejuvenation Research, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. highlight the potential for a noninvasive approach to cell therapy delivery in Parkinson disease–a safer and effective alternative to surgical transplantation of stem cells. The article is available free online. ...

Beginning on February 6, 2011, the two STEREO spacecraft are 180 degrees apart providing Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) scientists with a 360-degree view of the Sun. NASA's STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) spacecraft were launched on October 25, 2006, and have been gathering spectacular images of solar activity, especially solar storms, since the mission began. A key component of the STEREO mission is NRL's Sun Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation (SECCHI), a suite of five scientific telescopes that observe the solar corona and inner ...

LA JOLLA, CA – February 8, 2011 - A team of scientists from The Scripps Research Institute and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) have developed a novel technique to observe previously unknown details of how folded structures are formed from an intrinsically disordered protein. The insights could help scientists to better understand the mechanism of plaque formation in neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases. The results of the study, which has broad implications for the field, were recently published in an advanced, online ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Researchers at the University at Buffalo have devised two new ways of "stapling" peptide helices to prevent these medically important molecules from losing their shape and degrading in the presence of enzymes. The discovery could help speed the development of peptide-based drugs against diseases including cancer. UB scientists say the methods they pioneered are simpler than existing techniques, one of which employs an expensive ruthenium catalyst to connect chemical side chains that protrude from the main body of helical peptides. "There's a lot of potential ...