What do we mean by "common sense" when we talk about a disease? What affects the ideas and beliefs that patients have of their disease? Researchers at the University of Granada have developed a test for measuring and assessing chronic patients' cognitive representation of their disease. This advance will enable the development of clinical psychological treatments much more efficient than those currently employed. The cognitive representation of a disease is the ideas and beliefs that patients have in relation to their condition, at a given time. These ideas are based ...

New Rochelle, NY, October 21, 2010—Antigene therapy is a promising new treatment strategy that uses a DNA-based drug to pinpoint light energy to a target gene shutting down its activity. A review article published online ahead of print in Oligonucleotides, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. (www.liebertpub.com), details the possibilities and challenges for the clinical application of this novel photo-activated DNA modulating approach. The article is available free online at www.liebertpub.com/oli Netanel Kolevzon and Eylon Yavin, from The Hebrew ...

A study led by Dr Stuart Painter of the National Oceanography Centre helps explain the formation of huge phytoplankton blooms off the southeast coast of South America during the austral summer (December-January). The region supports the highly productive Patagonian Shelf marine ecosystem, which includes a globally important fishery. Coccolithophores are key members of the marine phytoplankton community. They are abundant in the sunlit upper layer of the world's oceans, often forming vast blooms that can be seen from space. "Coccolithophores are a complex group of plankton ...

People feel worse about a transgression that will take place in the future than an identical one that occurred in the past, according to new research from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Thinking about future events tends to stir up more emotions than events in the past, said Eugene Caruso, an assistant professor of behavioral science at Chicago Booth who conducted the research which appeared recently in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Whether an event has happened or will happen, can affect people's perceptions of fairness and ...

A child who grows up in the midst of political conflict, such as war or terrorism, can exhibit severe emotional scars. But certain qualities, which psychologists call "resilience factors," can help overcome this adversity. Prof. Michelle Slone of Tel Aviv University's Department of Psychology has now developed a program to help children develop these resilience factors and avoid the psychological disabilities that may arise from stress. Her method ― and her inspiring results ― were recently described in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and International ...

Disparities in breast cancer mortality continue to be unacceptably high in Chicago and significantly larger than the national average according to new data released today at a rally sponsored by the Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force. The Task Force also announced results of the first year of data collection by the Chicago Breast Cancer Quality Consortium, which found many hospitals in Chicago are not meeting accepted quality standards. The Sinai Urban Health Institute has been tracking mortality data since it first brought attention to the problem in 2006 ...

Researchers at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet have been able to describe the 3D structure of a complete egg receptor that binds sperm at the beginning of fertilization. The results, published in the journal Cell, will lead to better understanding of infertility and may enable entirely new types of contraceptives. For centuries, the imagination of people has been grasped by the encounter of gametes – egg and sperm-, whose union gives rise to a new individual. At the beginning of conception, sperm binds to proteins in the extracellular coat of the ...

The majority of emergency department patients consider having their condition correctly diagnosed with computed tomography (CT) more important than any associated radiation risk. However, two-thirds of patients prefer their ordering physician discuss the risks and benefits of CT with them before ordering the imaging test, according to a study in the November issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology (www.ajronline.org). "Because patients drive their care to some degree, it is important for physicians to understand patients' knowledge and attitudes about radiation ...

(Boston) – A new research study conducted by Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) shows that patient navigation services significantly improve biennial mammography screening rates among inner city women. The results, published online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, indicate the importance of patient navigation in reducing health disparities in vulnerable patient populations. Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in women, with 40,170 deaths in the United States in 2009. Lower mammography screening rates among minority and low ...

COLLEGE PARK, Md. - Offshore wind power offers a feasible way for Maryland to help meet its renewable energy goals, but presents some economic and political hurdles, concludes a new study by the University of Maryland Center for Integrative Environmental Research (CIER). The study, "Maryland Offshore Wind Development," is the most in-depth feasibility assessment to date of developing and operating wind farms in Maryland's Atlantic coastal waters, the researchers say. Among the study's key findings, offshore wind development will have to address two serious hurdles to ...

(PHOENIX, AZ) -- Scientists at Barrow Neurological Institute have recently made discoveries about a type of cell that may limit inflammation in the central nervous system (CNS) – a finding that could have important implications in the treatment of brain disorders such as multiple sclerosis. The research, led by Barrow's Fu-Dong Shi, MD, PhD, was published in the August 2010 issue of The Journal of Experimental Medicine, and simultaneously highlighted in Nature. Dr. Shi directs the Neuroimmunology Laboratory and Flow Cytometry Core Facility at Barrow. One of his research ...

WHAT: Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have found that the major malaria-transmitting mosquito species, Anopheles gambiae, is evolving into two separate species with different traits, a development that could both complicate malaria control efforts and potentially require new disease prevention methods. Their findings were published in back-to-back articles in the October 22 issue of the journal Science. A. gambiae is the most common vector of human malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, where rates of the disease are highest. The researchers compared the ...

Vegetation plays an unexpectedly large role in cleansing the atmosphere, a new study finds. The research, led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., uses observations, gene expression studies, and computer modeling to show that deciduous plants absorb about a third more of a common class of air-polluting chemicals than previously thought. The new study, results of which are being published this week in Science Express, was conducted with co-authors from the University of Northern Colorado and the University of Arizona. ...

A study led by a researcher at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine indicates that parent-only treatments for childhood obesity work equally as well as plans that include parents and child, while at the same time more cost effective and potentially easier for families. The results were published today in the advanced online edition of the journal Obesity. Kerri N. Boutelle, PhD, associate professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at UC San Diego and Rady Children's Hospital, San Diego, and colleagues set out to assess whether parent-only groups are ...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 – A team of scientists at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs have examined the energy consumption trends of communications equipment in use today and determined that gains in energy efficiency are not keeping pace with traffic growth. One consequence is that energy is going to become an increasingly important problem for communication networks. In one unabated, business-as-usual scenario, the scientists estimate that power consumed per user could increase by seven-fold over the next 10 years. Based on these findings, Bell Labs has developed several technology ...

LA JOLLA, CA, October 21, 2010 — A multi-institutional consortium led by The Scripps Research Institute scientists, the Joint Center for Structural Genomics (JCSG), is the sole focus of a special issue of the journal Acta Crystallographica Section F. This is the first time in the history of the monthly journal, which publishes peer-reviewed crystallography and structural biology articles, that an entire issue is devoted to the works of a single scientific center. The issue contains 35 articles grouped into sections that highlight different aspects of the JCSG high-throughput ...

CORAL GABLES, FL (October 21, 2010)--Researchers from the University of Miami (UM) and the University of Connecticut (UConn) have published a 2010 report on the American Jewish population, as part of a new North American Jewish Data Bank Report series. The new report called Jewish Population in the United States-2010 shows a greater number of Jews in the U.S. than in Israel. While the article puts the total number of Jews in the U.S. at around 6.5 million, the authors recognize there may be some double counting in the methodology and believe the number to be fewer than ...

The landscape of Central Africa 65 million years ago was a low-elevation tropical belt, but the jury is still out on whether the region's mammals browsed and hunted beneath the canopy of a lush rainforest. The scientific evidence for a tropical rainforest at that time is weak and far from convincing, says paleobotanist Bonnie F. Jacobs at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Fossil pollen from Central and West Africa provide no definitive evidence for communities of rainforest trees at the beginning of the Cenozoic, says Jacobs, an expert in the paleobotany of Africa ...

The availability of highly nutritious forage is one of four factors linked to the presence of elk populations in western Oregon and Washington, according to a modeling study recently completed by scientists from the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Northwest (PNW) Research Station. Findings from the two-year study will be used to update land management planning for the ecologically and economically important ungulate in the region. "Habitat models like the one we developed are critical to managing elk populations, particularly since current management practices are based ...

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Oct. 21, 2010 -- Tin may seem like the most unassuming of elements, but experiments performed at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are yielding surprising properties in extremely short-lived isotopes near tin-100's "doubly magic" nucleus. Experiments performed with the exotic nucleus tin-101, which has a single neutron orbiting tin-100's closed shell of 50 protons and 50 neutrons, indicate an unexpected reversal in the ordering of lowest states in the nucleus. The finding appears to violate a standard scenario offered by the nuclear ...

Boston, Mass. - A cholesterol-lowering drug reduced the enlarged prostates of hamsters to the same extent as a drug commonly used to treat benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), report researchers at Children's Hospital Boston and their colleagues in the October issue of the Journal of Urology. Together, the drugs worked even better. "We don't know the mechanism, but the results suggest to us that lowering cholesterol has the potential to reduce BPH in men," says senior author Keith Solomon, PhD, a biochemist, and member of the departments of Orthopaedic Surgery and Urology ...

At the heart of the method is a so-called quantum point contact (QPC). This is a narrow conductive channel in a semiconductor circuit. The scientists created a 70-nanometer narrow channel, about as wide as the wavelength of electrons in the semiconductor. The key is that only one electron at a time will fit through the channel, making possible extremely high-precision measurements of the electric current. As described in the current publication, this method was applied to photogenerated electrons for the first time ever. In the experimental set-up it is not the sun, but ...

Beating the flu has always been tough, but it has gotten even more difficult in recent years. Two of the four antiviral drugs used to treat a nasty case of the influenza A virus no longer work. Fortunately, scientists at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and Institute of Molecular Biophysics at Florida State University and researchers at Brigham Young University in Utah are close to understanding why these drugs have become less effective — and how new drugs might take their place. Their findings appear this week in the journal Science. "Resistance to drugs ...

Madison, WI, October 21, 2010 – Researchers at the University of Florida Research and Education Centers and scientists at the South Florida Water Management District have published a report regarding the trends in water quality feeding into Everglades National Park. The report can be found in the September-October 2010 Journal of Environmental Quality, published by the American Society of Agronomy, the Crop Science Society of America, and the Soil Science Society of America. The goal of the study was to provide insight regarding the variations in the quality of water ...

Two children, both age 3, enroll in publicly funded preschool. But they may have vastly different experiences: One child may attend preschool for 8 hours a day and be taught by a teacher with a bachelor's degree while the other child may be in preschool for only a few hours a day, under the supervision of a teacher with a 2-year degree. Why is there so much variability and are these programs meeting their potential for adequately preparing youngsters for school? In a new report in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a journal of the Association for Psychological ...