One person correctly remembers four of eight items just seen but is fuzzy on details. Another person recalls only two of the items but with amazingly precise clarity. So what ability translates to higher IQ? According to a University of Oregon study, the answer is very clear: More items stored in short-term memory is linked to greater fluid intelligence, as measured in IQ tests. The resolution of those memories, while important in many situations, shows no relationship with fluid intelligence. The notion that numbers of items is vitally important to short-term memory ...

PITTSBURGH, Nov. 29 – Breast cancers that arise sporadically, rather than through inheritance of certain genes, likely start with defects of DNA repair mechanisms that allow environmentally triggered mutations to accumulate, according to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. The findings, reported this week in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicate that potent chemotherapy drugs that target DNA in later-stage cancers ...

PHILADELPHIA - Mimicking the reflective iridescence of a butterfly's wing, investigators at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have developed a color-changing patch that could be worn on soldiers' helmets and uniforms to indicate the strength of exposure to blasts from explosives in the field. Future studies aim to calibrate the color change to the intensity of exposure to provide an immediate read on the potential harm to the brain and the subsequent need for medical intervention. The findings are described ...

As employees become increasingly anxious about job security and financial worries during an economic recession, satisfaction with the job they have, commitment to their company and engagement with their work are all affected detrimentally. This trend could be self-fulfilling in that disengaged employees could have a negative impact on a company's products or services and lead to its decline which would inevitably see the company failing. Researchers in business and management have now formulated a model of how such employee engagement can change during an economic downturn. ...

Christmas time is the time for mulled wine. And that tastes best at a Christmas market. So that market goers get home safely, the police are increasing their drink driving checks on car drivers right now. Those who are asked to blow into the device in this type of traffic check can be sure that the value the device displays after a short time is correct. This is because the "synthetic breath" - which helps to thoroughly test each newly developed evidential breath analyser in approval procedures at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) - can now be produced even ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. ¬¬¬–Gold nanoparticles, tiny pieces of gold so small that they can't be seen by the naked eye, are used in electronics, healthcare products and as pharmaceuticals to fight cancer. Despite their positive uses, the process to make the nanoparticles requires dangerous and extremely toxic chemicals. While the nanotechnology industry is expected to produce large quantities of nanoparticles in the near future, researchers have been worried about the environmental impact of the global nanotechnological revolution. Now, a study by a University of Missouri research ...

Tel Aviv - In the human brain, mechanical stress -- the amount of pressure applied to a particular area -- requires a delicate balance. Just the right force keeps neurons together and functioning as a system within the body, and proper nerve function is dependent on this tension. Now researchers at Tel Aviv University say that mechanical stress plays an even more important role than medical science previously believed. Their research has the potential to tell us more than ever before about the form and function of neuronal systems, including the human brain. And they've ...

Giving emergency artesunate suppositories to children with suspected severe malaria before referring them for treatment is a cost-effective intervention that can substantially improve the management of childhood malaria in remote African settings, according to a new study led by Boston University School of Public Health [BUSPH] researcher Yesim Tozan, PhD, (link to profile: http://sph.bu.edu/tozan) The study, which appears online Nov. 29 in The Lancet , builds on previous research that found that the administration of one dose of rectal artesunate by a community health ...

Can a road-trip across eastern North America, ancient ice sheets, and DNA samples unlock the ancestral history of jack pine trees? Julie Godbout and colleagues from the Université Laval, Quebec, Canada, certainly hoped that driving across northeastern U.S. and Canada to collect samples from jack pine trees would shed some light on how glaciers may have impacted present-day pine genetics. About 20,000 years ago, ice sheets covered most of the northern terrestrial surface of the continent of North America. For some boreal species this Last Glacial Maximum period may ...

Biomedical engineers at UC Davis have developed a plug-in interface for the microfluidic chips that will form the basis of the next generation of compact medical devices. They hope that the "fit to flow" interface will become as ubiquitous as the USB interface for computer peripherals. UC Davis filed a provisional patent on the invention Nov. 1. A paper describing the devices was published online Nov. 25 by the journal Lab on a Chip. "We think there is a huge need for an interface to bridge microfluidics to electronic devices," said Tingrui Pan, assistant professor ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Scientists can use cylinders as small as teapots to study the mechanisms involved in powerful hurricanes and other swirling natural phenomena. The earth's atmosphere and its molten outer core have one thing in common: Both contain powerful, swirling vortices. While in the atmosphere these vortices include cyclones and hurricanes, in the outer core they are essential for the formation of the earth's magnetic field. These phenomena in earth's interior and its atmosphere are both governed by the same natural mechanisms, according to experimental ...

Researchers have found that the naturally-occurring hormone and neurotransmitter oxytocin intensifies men's memories of their mother's affections during childhood. The study was published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers at the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Mount Sinai School of Medicine wanted to determine whether oxytocin, a hormone and neurotransmitter that is known to regulate attachment and social memory in animals, is also involved in human attachment memories. They conducted a randomized, double-blind, ...

San Diego, CA, November 30, 2010 – In the wake of multiple state bans on caffeinated alcoholic beverages (CABs) and an FDA warning to four companies to remove their products from the marketplace, an article published online today in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine delineates the scope of the public health problem and suggests areas of research that might help address it. "Although several manufacturers of caffeinated beer have withdrawn their products from the market, there is no sign that young people have decreased the practice of combining alcohol and energy ...

When crossing a street, we look to the left and right for cars and stay put on the sidewalk if we see a car close enough and traveling fast enough to hit us before we're able to reach the other side. It's an almost automatic decision, as though we instinctively know how to keep ourselves safe. Now neuroscientists have found that other animals are capable of making similar instinctive safety decisions. In a study published online the week of Nov. 29 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of Washington researcher Jeansok Kim demonstrates that ...

If you're trying to end racism, it's not enough to get people to understand that racism is still a problem. You also have to make them feel like they can do something about it, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Tracie L. Stewart of Georgia State University was inspired to conduct the study by work she's done on evaluating a popular diversity training program. She found that the program reduced many white participants' bias in the short term, which was good. "But some white participants ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. - A team of Mayo Clinic researchers has found that patients with broken heart syndrome, also known as apical ballooning syndrome (ABS), have blood vessels that don't react normally to stress. These results offer clues to the cause of this rare syndrome and may help with efforts to identify patients who are more vulnerable to mental stress so that appropriate therapies can be developed. The study is published online in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Apical ballooning syndrome affects mainly postmenopausal women, and a few men. The symptoms ...

How do individuals often cope with reentry from prison to society? Too frequently with avoidance, says Lindsay Phillips, assistant professor of psychology at Albright College in Reading, Pa. and author of the forthcoming paper, "Prison to Society: A Mixed Methods Analysis of Coping with Reentry," to be published by the International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology. "There is a defined process experienced by participants, which is initial optimism about release, followed by craving substances, facing practical barriers, or feeling overwhelmed," ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – You pick up a bottle of pomegranate juice at the store because you've learned that, although it costs more than most juices, it is replete with antioxidants that bring health benefits. But wait: Is the juice you've purchased really pomegranate juice? Or is the product label you have carefully read promising more than it delivers? A chemist at the University of California, Riverside is determined to find out. Cynthia Larive, a professor of chemistry, is playing detective by applying chemical tests to juice products sold as pomegranate juice or pomegranate ...

CORAL GABLES, FL (December 7, 2010)— Previous research has shown that when women are in their most fertile phase they become more attracted to certain qualities such as manly faces, masculine voices and competitive abilities. A new study by University of Miami (UM) Psychologist Debra Lieberman and her collaborators offers new insight into female sexuality by showing that women also avoid certain traits when they are fertile. The new study shows that women avoid their fathers during periods of peak fertility. The findings are included in a study entitled "Kin Affiliation ...

URBANA – The University of Illinois scientists who linked eating tomatoes with a reduced risk of prostate cancer have developed a tool that will help them trace the metabolism of tomato carotenoids in the human body. And they've secured funding from the National Institutes of Health to do it. "Scientists believe that carotenoids—the pigments that give the red, yellow, and orange colors to some fruits and vegetables—provide the cancer-preventive benefits in tomatoes, but we don't know exactly how it happens," said John W. Erdman, a U of I professor of human nutrition. The ...

With the emergence of an epidemic of obesity and type 2 diabetes (DM) throughout the world, the association of lifestyle habits that may affect the risk of metabolic diseases is especially important. Most prospective studies have shown that moderate drinkers tend to have about 30% lower risk of developing late onset diabetes than do non-drinkers, and moderate drinkers also tend to be at lower risk of developing metabolic syndrome (MS). A cross-sectional analysis of 6172 subjects age 35 -75 in Switzerland related varying levels of alcohol intake to the presence of DM, ...

Through an innovative use of cell phone records, researchers at UCLA, the University of Miami and Cal State, Fullerton, have found that women appear to avoid contact with their fathers during ovulation. "Women call their dads less frequently on these high-fertility days and they hang up with them sooner if their dads initiate a call," said Martie Haselton, a UCLA associate professor of communication in whose lab the research was conducted. Because they did not have access to the content of the calls, the researchers are not able to say for sure why ovulating women ...

DURHAM, N.C. – As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency weighs whether to define coal ash as hazardous waste, a Duke University study identifies new monitoring protocols and insights that can help investigators more accurately measure and predict the ecological impacts of coal ash contaminants. "The take-away lesson is we need to change how and where we look for coal ash contaminants," says Avner Vengosh, professor of geochemistry and water quality at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment. "Risks to water quality and aquatic life don't end with surface water contamination, ...

DURHAM, N.C. – Long a staple of nature documentaries, the somewhat bizarre development of a grub-like pink marsupial embryo outside the mother's womb is curious in another way. Duke University researchers have found that the developmental program executed by the marsupial embryo runs in a different order than the program executed by virtually every other vertebrate animal. "The limbs are at a different place in the entire timeline," said Anna Keyte, a postdoctoral biology researcher at Duke who did this work as part of her doctoral dissertation. "They begin development ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Humans are known to play it safe in a situation when they aren't sure of the odds, or don't have confidence in their judgments. We don't like to choose the unknown. And new evidence from a Duke University study is showing that chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest living primate relatives, treat the problem the same way we do. In studies conducted at the Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Republic of Congo and Lola ya Bonobo Sanctuary in Democratic Republic of Congo, researchers found the apes prefer to play it safe when the odds are uncertain. Graduate ...