Birds with high levels of stress hormones have the highest mating success and offer better parental care to their brood, according to new biology research at Queen's University. "Having high levels of glucocorticoid or stress hormone is often thought to indicate an individual in poor condition who has a low level of mating success. However, our research indicates that tree swallows with the highest levels of stress hormone have the highest reproductive success," says Frances Bonier (Biology) who investigates the way animals cope with challenges in their environment. The ...

NEW YORK – Mental health screening has been demonstrated to successfully connect African-American middle school students from a predominantly low-income area with school-based mental health services, according to results of a new study led by the TeenScreen National Center for Mental Health Checkups at Columbia University. The study was published in a recent online early edition of the Community Mental Health Journal. Previous research has demonstrated substantial disparities in access to specialized mental health services between African-American and white youth; data ...

COLLEGE PARK, Md. - When University of Maryland psychologist Andrea Chronis-Tuscano testified before a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) hearing last March, it changed her mind about possible risks of artificial food coloring for children, and drove her to look more closely at the products in her own pantry that she feeds her kids. Chronis-Tuscano walked in to the meeting certain that NO convincing scientific evidence supports the idea that food coloring additives cause Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD - nor that strict diets eliminating dyes effectively ...

VIDEO: A time-lapse video of an amorphous silicon surface. The lumps are clusters of about five atoms of silicon. The "hopping " motion of the lumps shows that a-Si is a glass.... Click here for more information. CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Using high-resolution imaging technology, University of Illinois researchers have answered a question that had confounded semiconductor researchers: Is amorphous silicon a glass? The answer? Yes – until hydrogen is added. Led by ...

Preschool children seem to grasp the true concept of counting only if they are taught to understand the number value of groups of objects greater than three, research at the University of Chicago shows. "We think that seeing that there are three objects doesn't have to involve counting. It's only when children go beyond three that counting is necessary to determine how many objects there are," said Elizabeth Gunderson, a UChicago graduate student in psychology. Gunderson and Susan Levine, the Stella M. Rowley Professor in Psychology, Comparative Human Development and ...

Father's Day this Sunday is a chance to recognize dads for putting up with all manner of nonsense that kids manage to cook up on the way to adulthood. But a new study by researchers at the University of Arizona shows just how important dad's job as a role model actually is. The study, "Impact of Fathers on Risky Sexual Behavior in Daughters: A Genetically and Environmentally Controlled Sibling Study," is due to be published in the journal Development and Psychopathology. When it comes to girls and their decisions about sex, it turns out a father's influence really ...

WASHINGTON, June 14, 2011 — The latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS) award-winning podcast series, "Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions," focuses on advances toward using material obtained from fruit to make plastic components for cars and other motor vehicles. The program explains how nano-cellulose material from bananas, pineapple, and other fruit can be used to make strong, light-weight, and more sustainable motor vehicle parts. It is based on a presentation earlier in 2011 at the ACS 241st National Meeting & Exposition in Anaheim, Calif. "The ...

MADISON, WI, JUNE 14, 2011 - Tropical maize proves to be a valuable genetic resource, containing genetics not found in USA Corn Belt maize. Most tropical maize varieties respond to the long summer day lengths that occur in U.S. growing regions by flowering late. This delayed flowering response results in poor yields, effectively trapping the useful genes and hindering their incorporation into maize hybrids adapted to the most productive corn growing regions. Scientists from the United States Department of Agriculture – Agricultural Research Service and North Carolina ...

Over half the world's population speaks more than one language. But it's not clear how these languages interact in the brain. A new study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that Chinese people who are fluent in English translate English words into Chinese automatically and quickly, without thinking about it. Like her research subjects, Taoli Zhang of the University of Nottingham is originally from China, but she lives in the UK and is fluent in English. She co wrote the ...

Cancer is crafty. When one avenue driving its growth is blocked by drugs targeting that path, the malignancy often creates a detour, finding an alternative route to get around the roadblock. In a study at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, researchers found that when a common type of prostate cancer was treated with conventional hormone ablation therapy blocking androgen production or androgen receptor (AR) function– which drives growth of the tumor – the cancer was able to adapt and compensate by activating a survival cell signaling pathway, effectively circumventing ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Millions of Americans have implantable medical devices, from pacemakers and defibrillators to brain stimulators and drug pumps; worldwide, 300,000 more people receive them every year. Most such devices have wireless connections, so that doctors can monitor patients' vital signs or revise treatment programs. But recent research has shown that this leaves the devices vulnerable to attack: In the worst-case scenario, an attacker could kill a victim by instructing an implantable device to deliver lethal doses of medication or electricity. At the Association ...

Over the next few years, it is likely that daily deal sites will have to settle for lower shares of revenues from businesses compared with their current levels, and it will be harder and more expensive for them to find viable candidates to fill their pipelines of daily deals, according to Utpal Dholakia, associate professor of management at Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business. In his third study – the most exhaustive study done to date on the daily deals industry – Dholakia found that there is very little difference between companies in the ever-expanding ...

Despite living in the countryside, where open space is plentiful and there is often significant agricultural production, California's more than half a million rural elders are far more likely to be overweight or obese, physically inactive and food insecure than their suburban counterparts, according to a new policy brief from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. All three conditions are risk factors for heart disease, diabetes and repeated falls — conditions also more prevalent among rural elders. Approximately 710,000 Californians aged 65 and over live in ...

PORTLAND, Ore. -- An Oregon-pioneered program aimed at improving health care for those with advanced illness is now receiving national attention. AARP recently released a report about the Physicians Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment, or POLST, program. The program was created to honor the treatment wishes of patients with advanced progressive illness or frailty. The AARP report titled, "Improving Advanced Illness Care: The Evolution of State POLST Programs," examines the evolution of POLST which, to date, has been implemented in at least 12 states. The report can ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - The interaction between a Hessian fly's saliva and the wheat plant it is attacking may be the key to whether the pest eats like a king or dies like a starving pauper, according to a study done at Purdue University. "The insect induces or suppresses susceptibility in the plant," said Christie Williams, a research scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service and a Purdue associate professor of entomology. "It's not that the fly larva is making holes and retrieving nutrients as once thought. The larva is doing something ...

NEW YORK (June 15, 2011) -- Ever since the Institute of Medicine issued its landmark report "To Err Is Human" in 1999, significant attention has been paid to improving patient safety in hospitals nationwide. However, a high number of adverse events, including major injury and even death, occur in private physician offices and outpatient clinics as well. In a new study -- the first of its kind -- researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College found that the number and magnitude of events resulting from medical errors is surprisingly similar inside and outside hospital walls. Published ...

Since 1611, humans have recorded the comings and goings of black spots on the sun. The number of these sunspots wax and wane over approximately an 11-year cycle -- more sunspots generally mean more activity and eruptions on the sun and vice versa. The number of sunspots can change from cycle to cycle and 2008 saw the longest and weakest solar minimum since scientists have been monitoring the sun with space-based instruments. Observations have shown, however, that magnetic effects on Earth due to the sun, effects that cause the aurora to appear, did not go down in synch ...

Grand Rapids, Mich. (June 14, 2011) – In a study recently published in Cancer Research, Van Andel Research Institute (VARI) researchers found a protein that could help predict the spread of the head and neck cancer nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC); this protein could also serve as part of a treatment strategy to stop the spread of the disease. Though uncommon in the United States, NPC is one of the most common malignant tumors in southern China and Southeast Asia with incidence rates nearly 25 times that of most of the rest of the world. VARI researchers worked with scientists ...

Philadelphia, PA, June 15, 2011 – People generally worry about who their neighbors are, especially neighbors of our children. If high-fat food and soda are nearby, people will imbibe, and consequently gain weight. Or will they? With students' health at risk, a study in the July/August 2011 issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior explores the influence food store locations near schools has on the student risk of being overweight and student fast-food and sweetened beverage consumption. Investigators from the University of Southern Maine surveyed 552 students ...

Philadelphia, PA, June 15, 2011 – According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services' Healthy People 2010 objectives, adequate fruit and vegetable consumption is a national public health priority for disease prevention and maintenance of good health. Not only do fruits and vegetables furnish valuable dietary nutrients, but they also contribute vital elements to chronic disease prevention for heart disease, hypertension, certain cancers, vision problems of aging, and possibly type 2 diabetes. With the nation's health in mind, Network for a Healthy California ...

SEATTLE – While people in Japan, Canada, and other nations are enjoying significant gains in life expectancy every year, most counties within the United States are falling behind, according to a new study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. IHME researchers, in collaboration with researchers at Imperial College London, found that between 2000 and 2007, more than 80% of counties fell in standing against the average of the 10 nations with the best life expectancies in the world, known as the international frontier. "We ...

New York, NY, June 15, 2011—A new Commonwealth Fund report finds that Medicaid managed care plans that are owned by publicly traded for-profit companies whose primary line of business is managing Medicaid enrollees spent an average of 14 percent of premiums on administrative costs, compared with an average of only 10 percent spent by non-publicly traded plans owned by groups of health care providers, health systems, community health centers, or clinics. Sampling health plans with at least 5,000 enrollees resulted in an initial sample of 225 Medicaid managed care plans representing ...

PredictAD is an EU-funded research project that develops objective and efficient methods for enabling earlier diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. Diagnosis requires a holistic view of the patient combining information from several sources, such as, clinical tests, imaging and blood samples. "The aim of the PredictAD project is to develop an objective indicator to diagnose Alzheimer's disease at the earliest stage possible. Current diagnostic guidelines emphasise the importance of various biomarkers in diagnostics. We have developed novel approaches to extract biomarkers ...

Alexandria, VA — A multidisciplinary clinical practice guideline, "Polysomnography for Sleep-Disordered Breathing Prior to Tonsillectomy in Children" will be published as a supplement to the July issue of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery. This guideline provides otolaryngologists with evidence-based recommendations for using polysomnography in assessing children, aged 2 to 18 years, with sleep-disordered breathing and who are candidates for tonsillectomy, with or without adenoidectomy. Polysomnography (PSG), commonly referred to as a sleep study, is presently the ...

This release is available in French. Dopamine replacement therapy, which is used to manage motor symptoms associated with Parkinson's disease, can, at times, adversely affect cognition. Dr. Oury Monchi, Ph. D. in neuronal modeling and Head of the Neurophysiological and Neuroimaging Research theme at the Centre de recherche de l'Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal (IUGM), which is affiliated with the Université de Montréal, and Dr. Penny A. MacDonald, Neurologist and postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Monchi's laboratory, have identified the reasons why within the framework ...