Montreal, January 19, 2011 – Toddlers who learn a second language from infancy have an edge over their unilingual peers, according to a new study from Concordia University and York University in Canada and the Université de Provence in France. As reported in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, the research team tested the understanding of English and French words among 24-month-olds to see if bilingual toddlers had acquired comparable vocabulary in each language. "By 24 months, we found bilingual children had already acquired a vocabulary in each of their two ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Scientists around the world have been hot on the trail of a genetic mutation closely associated with some brain cancers and leukemia since the mutation's discovery in 2008. The hunt is now yielding fruit. In the Jan. 18, 2011 issue of Cancer Cell, researchers reveal how the mutation contributes to cancer development and suggest potential ways to counter its effects. About 75 percent of people with low-grade brain tumors and 20 percent of people with acute myeloid leukemia have a mutated version of a gene known as IDH. IDH helps cells metabolize, or ...

PITTSBURGH, Jan. 18 – Family caregivers who had not discussed life support measures with critically ill patients took nearly two weeks longer to decide to forego further medical intervention than those who had prior conversations about the issues, according to researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the Graduate School of Public Health. They share their findings in a poster presentation at the Society of Critical Care Medicine congress this week in San Diego. Also, a patient's loved ones were more confident about acting as surrogate decision-makers ...

Washington, DC, January 19, 2011— Both boys and girls who are victims of bullying, including bullying through e-mail and the internet, are at elevated risk for depression. However, according to a new study, adolescent girls may engage in substance use as a result of bullying-related depression,. As schools reopen following the holidays, the message to parents of adolescent girls is that bullying can have serious consequences:"If your daughter is a victim of bullying, take it seriously, do all possible to prevent recurrence, and attend to possible depression and substance ...

Serious traffic gridlocks, like the jam on Beijing's national expressway a few months ago which brought vehicles to a halt for days, are a real-world issue needing attention. Unfortunately, such standstills are not uncommon in Beijing, or in other cities around the world. Such incidents motivate the analysis of traffic to minimize similar events and provide insight into road design and construction, such as where to install traffic lights and toll booths, how many lanes to build, and where to construct an overpass or a tunnel. The goals of these analyses are to relieve ...

MANHATTAN, Kan. -- The forecast for predicting the next political hotspots could be much more accurate because of a model developed by two Kansas State University professors and a colleague in New York. The model, named the Predictive Societal Indicators of Radicalism Model of Domestic Political Violence Forecast, is currently five for five in predicting which countries will likely experience an escalation in domestic political violence against their governments within the next five years. "So far it's been pretty accurate," said Sam Bell, assistant professor of political ...

TORONTO, Ont., Jan. 19, 2011–Health care systems around the world are failing to use evidence obtained through research when making decisions, causing inefficiencies and reduced quantity and quality of life, according to a leading expert in the field of "knowledge translation." "Failures to use research evidence to inform decision-making are apparent across all key decision-maker groups," said Dr. Sharon Straus, a geriatrician and director of knowledge translation at St. Michael's Hospital. Dr. Straus was the guest editor of the January issue of the Journal of Clinical ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. —Two aquatic biologists have proven that you don't have to travel to exotic locales to search for unusual new species. They discovered a distinctive species of crayfish in Tennessee and Alabama that is at least twice the size of its competitors. Its closest genetic relative, once thought to be the only species in its genus and discovered in 1884 about 130 miles away in Kentucky, can grow almost as big as a lobster. The researchers found their first specimen under one of the biggest rocks in the deepest part of a creek that has been a (literal) stomping ...

AMES, Iowa -- Parents may have good reason to be concerned about how much time their kids have been spending playing their new video games since the holidays. A new study by an international research team -- including an Iowa State University psychologist -- found further evidence that video game "addiction" exists globally and that greater amounts of gaming, lower social competence and greater impulsivity were risk factors for becoming pathological gamers. The two-year longitudinal study of 3,034 third through eighth grade students in Singapore found approximately nine ...

High school students are more likely to retake the SAT if they score just below a round number, such as 1290, than if they score just above it. That's the conclusion of a study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, which found that round numbers are strong motivators. The work was inspired by a study that found that a car's value drops suddenly when it passes a 10,000 mile mark—so a car that has 70,000 miles is worth markedly less than one with 69,900 miles. "We were talking about that and we started thinking about ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Already under fire for raising taxes on individuals and businesses, the state Legislature missed a major opportunity to update the Illinois tax structure, says a University of Illinois law professor. Richard L. Kaplan, an expert on taxation and retirement issues, says the state of Illinois has a seriously outmoded tax structure that's in dire need of reform. "Tax reform is often very difficult because tax changes necessarily alter the burden of taxation, and some people end up paying more," he said. "That makes legislators hesitant to undertake the ...

A number of states are trying to deal with huge unfunded pension liabilities that threaten to absorb large shares of K-12 education budgets. Because this fiscal crisis may force policymakers to consider teacher retirement benefit system reform, the authors of a newly published journal issue suggest now is the opportune time to examine the consequences of these systems on school staffing and educator quality. Michael Podgursky, a professor of economics in the University of Missouri College of Arts and Science, co-edited, with University of Arkansas Professor Robert Costrell, ...

In the materials science equivalent of a football fan jumping onto the field and scoring a touchdown, scientists are documenting that one fundamental component of computer chips, long regarded as a passive bystander, can actually be made to act like a switch. That potentially allows it to take part in the electronic processes that power cell phones, iPads, computers, and thousands of other products. In a report in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the scientists document the multiple ways in which silicon dioxide, long regarded simply as an electric insulator, ...

Scientists are reporting development and successful lab tests of "killer paper," a material intended for use as a new food packaging material that helps preserve foods by fighting the bacteria that cause spoilage. The paper, described in ACS' journal, Langmuir, contains a coating of silver nanoparticles, which are powerful anti-bacterial agents. Aharon Gedanken and colleagues note that silver already finds wide use as a bacteria fighter in certain medicinal ointments, kitchen and bathroom surfaces, and even odor-resistant socks. Recently, scientists have been exploring ...

Scientists are reporting an advance in overcoming a major barrier to the use of the genetic material RNA in nanotechnology — the field that involves building machines thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair and now is dominated by its cousin, DNA. Their findings, which could speed the use of RNA nanotechnology for treating disease, appear in the monthly journal ACS Nano. Peixuan Guo and colleagues point out that DNA, the double-stranded genetic blueprint of life, and RNA, its single-stranded cousin, share common chemical features that can serve as building ...

Knee replacement patients undergoing telerehabilitation – a unique Internet-based postoperative rehabilitation program that can be conducted from the patient's home – experience the same results as patients who undergo traditional postoperative rehabilitation, according to a new study published in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (JBJS). Telerehabilitation is becoming a popular alternative for patients who live in remote areas and who have no access to traditional rehabilitation centers. "The concept for telerehabilitation is a decade old; however, well-conducted ...

Scientists are reporting a key advance toward development of a way to combat the terrible plant diseases that caused the Irish potato famine and still inflict billions of dollars of damage to crops each year around the world. Their study appears in ACS' bi-weekly journal Organic Letters. Teck-Peng Loh and colleagues point out that the Phytophthora fungi cause extensive damage to food crops such as potatoes and soybeans as well as to ornamental plants like azaleas and rhododendrons. One species of the fungus caused the Irish potato famine in the mid 1840s. That disaster ...

An Inserm research team in Toulouse, led by Dr Stein Silva (Inserm Unit 825 "Brain imaging and neurological handicaps"), working with the "Modelling tissue and nociceptive stress" Host Team (MATN IFR 150), were interested in studying the illusions described by many patients under regional anaesthetic. In their work, to be published in the journal Anesthesiology, the researchers demonstrated that anaesthetising an arm affects brain activity and rapidly impairs body perception. The ultimate aim of the work is to understand how neuronal circuits are reorganised at this ...

The blood test procedure used on newborn infants for 40 years is finding a second life in the search for new lifesaving medications, according to an article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS' weekly newsmagazine. C&EN Senior Editor Celia Henry Arnaud notes that collecting drops of blood from patients and depositing the drops on special paper cards to dry has been used for decades to screen newborns for hereditary disorders and infectious disease. But the dried blood spot technology has found a new role at pharmaceutical companies in the ...

The current Special Issue of Technology & Innovation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Inventors ™, (www.academyofinventors.org), now available on-line at: http://www.cognizantcommunication.com/filecabinet/Technology/techinnovation.html , is focused on the history, process and practice of scientific peer review, with several articles aimed at assessing scientific peer review within the federal government and peer review's relationship to federal policy formation. According to A. Alan Moghissi, president of the nonproft Institute for Regulatory Science, and Michael ...

Conservation paleobiologists—scientists who use the fossil record to understand the evolutionary and ecological responses of present-day species to changes in their environment – are putting the dead to work. A new review of the research in this emerging field provides examples of how the fossil record can help assess environmental impact, predict which species will be most vulnerable to environmental changes and provide guidelines for restoration. The literature review by conservation paleobiologists Gregory P. Dietl of the Paleontological Research Institution ...

It is possible to construct a three-dimensional, 3D, face from flat 2D images, according to research published in the International Journal of Biometrics this month. The discovery could be used for biometrics in security applications or in forensic investigations. Xin Guan and Hanqi Zhuang of Florida Atlantic University on Boca Raton explain how Biometrics, the technology of performing personal identification or authentication via an individual's physical attributes, is becoming an increasingly viable solution for identity management, information protection and homeland ...

LA JOLLA, CA – A team of scientists at The Scripps Research Institute and the University of Virginia has determined the structure of the protein package that delivers the genetic material of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to human cells. The work is the culmination of studies carried out over the last decade looking at different portions of the cone-shaped container, or the capsid. The final piece of the puzzle, described in an article published in Nature on January 20, 2011, details the structure of the two ends of the cone. "This paper is a real milestone ...

PORTLAND, Ore. – According to research conducted at the Oregon National Primate Research Center at Oregon Health & Science University, the commonly held belief that oral contraceptives cause weight gain appears to be false. The results of the study are published online and will appear in next month's edition of the journal Human Reproduction. "A simple Google search will reveal that contraceptives and the possibility that they may cause weight gain is a very highly debated topic," said Alison Edelman, M.D., a physician and researcher in the Department of Obstetrics ...

With mortgage loan defaults on the rise yet again, two mortgage researchers are proposing a new type of mortgage contract that automatically resets the balance and the monthly payment based on the mortgaged home's market value. Brent Ambrose, Smeal Professor of Real Estate and director of the Institute for Real Estate Studies at the Penn State Smeal College of Business, and Richard Buttimer, a professor in the Belk College of Business at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, call their new mortgage contract the "adjustable balance mortgage" and contend that it ...