Lent in the Christian tradition is a time of sacrifice and penance. It also is a period of purification and enlightenment. Pain purifies. It atones for sin and cleanses the soul. Or at least that's the idea. Theological questions aside, can self-inflicted pain really alleviate the guilt associated with immoral acts? A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, explores the psychological consequences of experiencing bodily pain. Psychological scientist Brock Bastian of the University of Queensland, Australia and ...

The Cambrian "explosion" of multicellular animal life is one of the most significant evolutionary events in Earth's history. But what was it that jolted the Earth system enough to prompt the evolution of animals? While we take the presence of oxygen in our atmosphere for granted, it was not always this way. The Neoproterozoic era that preceded the Cambrian explosion of life was witness to a dramatic rise in oxygen levels. It has been widely assumed that the rise in atmospheric oxygen was the essential precursor to the evolution of animals. But the work of Graham Shields-Zhou ...

Chapel Hill, NC – A UNC study released this week in the Journal of Clinical Oncology finds an increasing incidence of squamous cell carcinoma of the oral tongue in young white females in the United States over the last three decades. A team of researchers from UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center analyzed data from the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database and found that, between 1975 and 2007, the overall incidence for all ages, genders, and races of the disease was decreasing. However, the incidence of oral tongue ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Think picking all the top-seeded teams as the Final Four in your March Madness bracket is your best bet for winning the office pool? Think again. According to an operations research analysis model developed by Sheldon H. Jacobson, a professor of computer science and the director of the simulation and optimization laboratory at the University of Illinois, you're better off picking a combination of two top-seeded teams, a No. 2 seed and a No. 3 seed. "There are patterns that exist in the seeds," Jacobson says. "As much as we like to believe otherwise, ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Many Americans are skeptical about whether the world's weather is changing, but apparently the degree of skepticism varies systematically depending on what that change is called. According to a University of Michigan study published in the forthcoming issue of Public Opinion Quarterly, more people believe in "climate change" than in "global warming." "Wording matters," said Jonathon Schuldt, the lead author of the article about the study and a doctoral candidate in the U-M Department of Psychology. Schuldt co-authored the study with U-M psychologists ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers are developing a technology that aims to help make solar cells more affordable and efficient by using a new manufacturing method that employs an ultrafast pulsing laser. The innovation may help to overcome two major obstacles that hinder widespread adoption of solar cells: the need to reduce manufacturing costs and increase the efficiency of converting sunlight into an electric current, said Yung Shin, a professor of mechanical engineering and director of Purdue University's Center for Laser-Based Manufacturing. Critical to both are ...

MIDWAY ATOLL — The oldest known U.S. wild bird – a coyly conservative 60 -- is a new mother. The bird, a Laysan albatross named Wisdom, was spotted a few weeks ago with a chick by John Klavitter, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist and the deputy manager of the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. The bird has sported and worn out 5 bird bands since she was first banded by U.S. Geological Survey scientist Chandler Robbins in 1956 as she incubated an egg. Chandler rediscovered Wisdom in 2001. In 1956, he estimated Wisdom to be at least 5 years old then since ...

NEW YORK CITY (March 7, 2011)— Paul Tesar, PhD, of Case Western Reserve University, a member of the inaugural class of The New York Stem Cell Foundation – Robertson Investigators, published his research on the ability to isolate epiblast stem cells from preimplantation mouse embryos. This research enhances our understanding of the many forms of pluriportent stem cells that scientists use for researching so many debilitating diseases. "I think that this paper will change the way people think about what human ES cells represent from a developmental perspective," said Dr. ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. ADAM-12 is not only the name of a 1970's television police drama – it's also the gene that University of Missouri researchers believe could be an important element in the fight against cancer, arthritis, and cardiac hypertrophy, or thickening of the heart's walls. Alpana Ray, research associate professor in the MU College of Veterinary Medicine, and a team of researchers including Bimal Ray, professor of Veterinary Pathobiology, have been studying the ADAM family of genes for several years. Alpana Ray's latest publication in the Proceedings of the National ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – March 8, 2011 – In recognition of National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month during March, GIE: Gastrointestinal Endoscopy has published a special issue for March on colonoscopy and colorectal cancer. The issue includes a study showing that colonoscopy has prevented a substantial number of deaths from colorectal cancer and that many more could have been prevented with more widespread use. The analysis reports that approximately 13,800 to 22,000 colorectal cancer deaths could have been prevented in 2005, whereas 7,300 to 11,700 were actually prevented through ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE from the UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO March 8, 2011 TORONTO, ON – Communication technologies that help people stay connected to the workplace are often seen as solutions to balancing work and family life. A new study, however, suggests there may be a "dark side" to the use of these technologies for workers' health – and these effects seem to differ for women and men. Using data from a national survey of American workers, University of Toronto researchers asked study participants how often they were contacted outside the workplace by phone, email or text ...

Bethesda, Md. (Mar. 8, 2011) -- What do you have when you line up a martial artist, acrobatic gymnast, police officer, firefighter, NASCAR driver, and NFL running back? "Watson," the IBM super-computer that recently routed humanity's best on Jeopardy might have guessed the answer was "the Village People," to which host Alex Trebek could have replied, "Sorry. The answer we were looking for is 'Batman'." At least that is the correct answer for physiologist E. Paul Zehr. In a new article, Zehr, a professor at the University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, describes ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Passive news reporting that doesn't attempt to resolve factual disputes in politics may have detrimental effects on readers, new research suggests. The study found that people are more likely to doubt their own ability to determine the truth in politics after reading an article that simply lists competing claims without offering any idea of which side is right. "There are consequences to journalism that just reports what each side says with no fact checking," said Raymond Pingree, author of the study and assistant professor of communication at Ohio ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Patients with epilepsy worry more than their physicians do about the patients' potential memory loss accompanying their seizure disorder, according to a recent study. In a survey, patients with epilepsy as a group ranked memory loss as their second-most important concern on a list of 20 potential medical or social concerns. Memory loss as a concern came in 12th in the frequency of responses among concerns recorded by physicians and nurse practitioners who completed the same survey. Patients and practitioners agreed overall on three of the top five concerns: ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – March 8, 2011 – In recognition of National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month during March, GIE: Gastrointestinal Endoscopy has put out a special issue for March on colonoscopy and colorectal cancer. In this issue is the first statement from a new initiative by the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE) called the Preservation and Incorporation of Valuable Endoscopic Innovations (PIVI). The first PIVI document examines real-time endoscopic assessment of the histology of diminutive (≤ 5 mm in size) colorectal polyps and is one in a ...

Implanting electrodes into a pea-sized part of the brain can dramatically improve life for people with severe cervical dystonia – a rare but extremely debilitating condition that causes painful, twisting neck muscle spasms – according to the results of a pilot study led by Jill Ostrem, MD and Philip Starr, MD PhD at the University of California, San Francisco. Today, people with cervical dystonia can be treated with medications or injections of botulinum toxin (e.g., Botox®), which interrupt signals from the brain that cause these spasms. However, those treatments do ...

The Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) may possess the secret to baking perfect buns every time. Its researchers have developed a production-line system that automatically inspects the quality of sandwich buns exiting the oven and adjusts oven temperatures if it detects unacceptable buns. "We have closed the loop between the quality inspection of buns and the oven controls to meet the specifications required by food service and fast food customers," said GTRI senior research engineer Douglas Britton. "By creating a more accurate, uniform and faster assessment process, ...

Researchers at the University of California, Davis have discovered a "cross-talk" between two major biological pathways that involve pain—research that may pave the way to new approaches to understanding and controlling chronic pain. And they did it with something old, new, practical and basic. The newly published research reveals that analgesia mediated by inhibitors of the enzyme, soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH), is dependent on a pain-mediating second messenger known as cyclic adenosinemonophosphate or cAMP. "The interaction of many complex biological pathways is ...

Why should we care about butterflies and moths? Thanks to butterflies, bees, birds, and other animal pollinators, the world's flowering plants are able to reproduce and bear fruit. That very basic capability is at the root of many of the foods we eat. And, not least, pollination adds to the beauty we see around us. Yet today, there is evidence of alarming pollinator population declines worldwide. Fortunately, science investigators of this crucial issue can use data collected and organized in the Butterflies and Moths of North America (BAMONA) database to monitor the ...

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – It took nearly a decade before University of Maryland researchers were allowed to talk about their work identifying the anthrax strain used in the 2001 deadly letter attacks. But now, they and the other key members of the high-powered science team have published the first account of the pioneering work, which launched the new field of "microbial forensics" and gave bioterrorism investigators a way to "fingerprint" bacteria. The current online Early Edition of the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) details the multi-institutional research ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – A study from the microbiology lab at Rhode Island Hospital has found that a new test may be more accurate in identifying a common sexually transmitted infection (STI), Trichamonos vaginalis (TV). The researchers also noted a high prevalence of TV in women in the 36- to 45- year-old age group -- a group not normally included in the recommended STI screening criteria. The study is now published online in advance of print in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology. TV is a STI that can affect both men and women, and its symptoms can be associated with many ...

AURORA, Colo. (March 8, 2011) – In a major breakthrough in the battle against Parkinson's disease, researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine have discovered a drug that stops the progression of the degenerative illness in mice and is now being tested in humans. "Drugs currently used to treat Parkinson's disease just treat symptoms; they do not stop the disease from getting worse," said senior author Curt Freed, MD, who heads the division of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology at the CU School of Medicine. "We've now discovered that we can prevent ...

In the thick of whale season, researchers from Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shed new light on the wintering grounds of the humpback whale. The primary breeding ground for the North Pacific was always thought to be the main Hawaiian Islands (MHI). However, a new study has shown that these grounds extend all the way throughout the Hawaiian Archipelago and into the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI), also known as Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument (PMNM). Humpback whales, an ...

WASHINGTON, DC, March 3, 2011 — Children in classrooms with inadequate material resources and children whose teachers feel they are not respected by colleagues exhibit more mental health problems than students in classrooms without these issues, finds a new study in the March issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior. "Sociologists and other researchers spend a lot of time looking at work environments and how they are linked to the mental health of adults, but we pay less attention to the relationship between kids' well-being and their 'work' environments—namely ...

"We have measured the distance to the most distant mature cluster of galaxies ever found", says the lead author of the study in which the observations from ESO's VLT have been used, Raphael Gobat (CEA, Paris). "The surprising thing is that when we look closely at this galaxy cluster it doesn't look young -- many of the galaxies have settled down and don't resemble the usual star-forming galaxies seen in the early Universe." Clusters of galaxies are the largest structures in the Universe that are held together by gravity. Astronomers expect these clusters to grow through ...