New research using a world leading motorcycle simulator to analyse rider behaviour has proved that safer doesn't necessarily mean slower and that formal advanced training for bikers can demonstrate improved safety on our roads. The study was carried out by researchers at The University of Nottingham's Centre for Motorcycle Ergonomics & Rider Human Factors. The preliminary results of the research are published today by the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM) which funded the research. Motorcyclists are badly over-represented in accident statistics. As of June 2010 ...

If you should find yourself running from the police, watch your step. If you fall and break an ankle, chances are you'll receive less pain medication when they take you to the ER for treatment. That's one of the findings from a study by Case Western Reserve University sociologist Susan Hinze, and Joshua Tamayo-Sarver, who collected the data and is an emergency department doctor in California. The researchers examined the prescription patterns of 398 randomly selected emergency department doctors from the American College of Emergency Physicians who responded to a ...

Scientists are calling for radical new approaches to conservation following the first biodiversity audit of its kind. Led by the University of East Anglia (UEA), with partners Natural England, the Forestry Commission, Norfolk and Suffolk Biodiversity Partnerships and County Councils, the Brecks Partnership, and Plantlife, the painstaking study pooled information on every plant and animal species recorded in Breckland – a special landscape of heathland, forest and farmland stretching across the Norfolk and Suffolk border. In an unprecedented effort, the UEA team collated ...

In a unique study involving young boa constrictors, University of Cincinnati researchers put snakes to work on varying diameters and flexibility of vertical rope to examine how they might move around on branches and vines to gather food and escape enemies in their natural habitat. The findings by Greg Byrnes, a University of Cincinnati postdoctoral fellow in the department of biological sciences, and Bruce C. Jayne, a UC professor of biology, are published in the December issue of The Journal of Experimental Biology. For many Americans, it was the most dreaded moment ...

CHICAGO (November 30, 2010) – Surgeons married to physicians face more challenges in balancing their personal and professional lives than do surgeons whose partners work in a non-physician field or stay at home, according to new research findings focused on surgeon marriages published in the November issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. As part of the significant influx of women into the workforce over the last 50 years, more women are now surgeons and physicians than ever before. This trend has produced many more dual- career marriages, including ...

A European consortium comprising the National Physical Laboratory, ST Microelectronics, the University of Edinburgh, and TU Delft has been involved in the development and application of the Megaframe Imager - an ultrafast camera capable of recording images at the incredible rate of one million frames Since the introduction of solid-state optical sensors, like those found in digital cameras, the main trend has been towards increasing the resolution (i.e. number of pixels) while miniaturising the chip. However, the other factor is the number of frames the chip is capable ...

Society appreciates powerful individuals' efforts, regardless of them having success or failing. Conversely, when someone without such power fails, their failure is attributed to their "unability to carry out their tasks", and their efforts are not appreciated. In other words: individuals' personal power clearly affects how others perceive their success or failures. That is the conclusion drawn from a research conducted by professors Rocío Martínez Gutiérrez, Rosa Rodríguez Bailón and Miguel Moya, of the Department of Social Psychology of the University of Granada, recently ...

For companies carrying out R+D activities, having researchers leave for competitor companies poses an important challenge. Even if a company's innovations are patented, their employees leaving can lead to information and knowledge leaks to their rivals. Which researchers in an R+D firm are most likely to leave to work for the competition? This research, carried out by by Neus Palomeras and Eduardo Melero from the UC3M Department of Business Economics, attempts to answer this question. The most noteworthy conclusion of this study, published in the journal, Management ...

New research by University of Minnesota psychologists shows how social support benefits are maximized when provided "invisibly"—that is without the support recipient being aware that they are receiving it. The study, "Getting in Under the Radar: A Dyadic View of Invisible Support," is published in the December issue of the journal Psychological Science. In the study, graduate student Maryhope Howland and professor Jeffry Simpson suggest there may be something unique about the emotional support behaviors that result in recipients being less aware of receiving support. ...

BOSTON – November 30, 2010 – The brain contains more cholesterol than any other organ in the body, has to produce its own cholesterol and won't function normally if it doesn't churn out enough. Defects in cholesterol metabolism have been linked with Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative conditions. Now researchers at Joslin Diabetes Center have discovered that diabetes can affect how much cholesterol the brain can make. Scientists in the laboratory of C. Ronald Kahn, M.D., head of Joslin's Integrative Physiology and Metabolism research section, found that brain ...

Children aren't the only youngsters who are picky eaters: More than half of all species are believed to change their diets -- sometimes more than once -- between birth and adulthood. And a new study by ecologists at Rice University and the University of California, Santa Barbara, finds this pattern has major implications for the survival of threatened species and the stability of natural ecosystems. With thousands of species facing Earth's sixth major mass extinction, there is little doubt that the planet's biodiversity is in rapid decline. But many questions remain about ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- The major challenge for public health in the era of genomics is to generate the base of evidence necessary to demonstrate when use of genomic information in public health can improve health outcomes in a safe, effective and cost-effective manner, participants at an international meeting have concluded. In their report, "Public health in an era of genomic and personalized medicine," experts in medicine, law, bioethics, public health, and genetics have identified key issues for the future of global public health in light of rapid developments in genomic ...

Growing corn for biofuels production is having unintended effects on water quality and quantity in northwestern Mississippi. More water is required to produce corn than to produce cotton in the Mississippi Delta requiring increased withdrawals of groundwater from the Mississippi River Valley alluvial (MRVA) aquifer for irrigation. This is contributing to already declining water levels in the aquifer. In addition, increased use of nitrogen fertilizer for corn in comparison to cotton could contribute to low dissolved oxygen conditions in the Gulf of Mexico. These are ...

Could making child pornography legal lead to lower rates of child sex abuse? It could well do, according to a new study by Milton Diamond, from the University of Hawaii, and colleagues. Results from the Czech Republic showed, as seen everywhere else studied (Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Finland, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sweden, USA), that rape and other sex crimes have not increased following the legalization and wide availability of pornography. And most significantly, the incidence of child sex abuse has fallen considerably since 1989, when child pornography became ...

The well-reported arsenic contamination of drinking water in Bangladesh – called the "largest mass poisoning of a population in history" by the World Health Organization and known to be responsible for a host of slow-developing diseases – has now been shown to have an immediate and toxic effect on the struggling nation's economy. An international team of economists is the first to identify a dramatic present-day consequence of the contaminated groundwater wells, in addition to the longer-term damages expected to occur in coming years. According to research published ...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 30, 2010 — The latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS) award-winning podcast series, "Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions," focuses on the discovery that black rice — a little-known variety of the grain that is the staple food for one-third of the world's population — may help soothe the inflammation involved in allergies, asthma and other diseases. In the podcast, Mendel Friedman, Ph.D., and colleagues at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Western Regional Research Center in Albany, Calif., describe results of a study published in ...

Montreal, November 30, 2010 – Approximately 13 percent of parents turn to alternative therapies to treat their children's asthma, according to a new study from the Université de Montréal. The findings, published recently in the Canadian Respiratory Journal, suggest that this trend is associated with a two-fold higher rate of poor asthma control in children. "Previous studies have shown that close to 60 percent of parents believe that complementary and alternative medicines are helpful," says seniour author Francine M. Ducharme, a Université de Montréal professor and pediatrician ...

An Italian research team confirmed that the scoring system for Wilson's disease (WD) provides good diagnostic accuracy with 93% positive and 92% negative predictive values, respectively in children with mild liver disease. In asymptomatic children, a urinary copper excretion above 40 μg/24 hours was suggestive of WD, however the penicillamine challenge test (PCT) did not provide an accurate diagnosis in this patient subset. Results of the study appear in the December issue of Hepatology, a journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the American Association for ...

A mysterious high-altitude layer of sulphur dioxide discovered by ESA's Venus Express has been explained. As well as telling us more about Venus, it could be a warning against injecting our atmosphere with sulphur droplets to mitigate climate change. Venus is blanketed in sulphuric acid clouds that block our view of the surface. The clouds form at altitudes of 50󈞲 km when sulphur dioxide from volcanoes combines with water vapour to make sulphuric acid droplets. Any remaining sulphur dioxide should be destroyed rapidly by the intense solar radiation above 70 km. So ...

New research shows that anti-microbial medications are a common cause of drug-induced liver injury (DILI) leading to acute liver failure (ALF), with women and minorities disproportionately affected. While ALF evolves slowly, once it does occur a spontaneous recovery is unlikely; however liver transplantation offers an excellent survival rate. Full findings of this ten-year prospective study are published in the December issue of Hepatology, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases. Patients with liver failure resulting from DILI may experience ...

DURHAM, N.H. – Once lost in the mists of time, the colonial hydrology of the northeastern United States has been reconstructed by a team of geoscientists, biological scientists and social scientists, including University of New Hampshire Ph.D. candidate Christopher Pastore. The results, which extend as far back as the year 1600, appear in the current issue of the journal Environmental Science & Technology in the article "Tapping Environmental History to Recreate America's Colonial Hydrology." The findings provide a new way of uncovering the hydrology of the past and will ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Mayo Clinic researchers have shown why, in a minority of HIV patients, immune function improves despite a lack of response to standard anti-retroviral treatment. In these cases, researchers say, the virus has lost its ability to kill immune cells. The findings appear in the online journal PLoS Pathogens. The goal of current treatments for HIV is to block the virus from reproducing, thereby allowing the immune system to repair itself. These findings show for the first time that not all HIV viruses are equally bad for the immune system. Patients who ...

BOSTON – November 30, 2010 – The brain contains more cholesterol than any other organ in the body, has to produce its own cholesterol and won't function normally if it doesn't churn out enough. Defects in cholesterol metabolism have been linked with Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative conditions. Now researchers at Joslin Diabetes Center have discovered that diabetes can affect how much cholesterol the brain can make. Scientists in the laboratory of C. Ronald Kahn, M.D., head of Joslin's Integrative Physiology and Metabolism research section, found that brain ...

GLENDALE, Arizona (November 30, 2010)—What are the earliest brain changes associated with the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease? A scientific report published in the October Journal of Alzheimer's Disease finds reduced activity of an energy-generating enzyme in deceased young adult brain donors who carry a common genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease—before the protein changes or microscopic abnormalities commonly associated with the disease and almost five decades before the age at which they might have developed memory and thinking problems. Arizona researchers ...

Despite medical advances enabling those with diabetes to live longer today than in the past, a 50-year-old with the disease still can expect to live 8.5 years fewer years, on average, than a 50-year-old without the disease. This critical finding comes from a new report commissioned by The National Academy on an Aging Society and supported by sanofi-aventis U.S. The analysis — based on data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) — found that older adults with diabetes have a lower life expectancy at every age than those without the disease. At age 60, for example, ...