WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Face-to-face workplace interactions may be the best way to educate and encourage people to consider becoming organ donors, according to new research from Purdue University. "Workplaces are a key location for people to learn about health and wellness issues, but how information is distributed in this setting can make a difference for sensitive health topics such as organ donation," said Susan E. Morgan, a professor of communication. "There is an incredible amount of misinformation and medical mistrust surrounding the organ donation process, which ...

A one-year follow-up study on seniors who participated in a strength training exercise program shows sustained cognitive benefits as well as savings for the healthcare system. The research, conducted at the Centre for Hip Health and Mobility at Vancouver Coastal Health and the University of British Columbia, is published today in the Archives of Internal Medicine. The study is the first to examine whether both cognitive and economic benefits are sustained after formal cessation of a tailored exercise program. It builds on the Brain Power Study, published in the January ...

Results from a government-sponsored clinical trial of inactivated 2009 H1N1 influenza vaccine in people with asthma indicate that a single dose of vaccine was safe and induced a strong immune response predictive of protection. The findings also suggest that individuals over the age of 60 who have severe asthma may require a larger dose of vaccine. The study was cosponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), two components of the National Institutes of Health, and appears online ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Changes in diet have been linked to a reduction of abnormal behaviors in mentally ill people or animals, but a Purdue University study shows that diet might also trigger the onset of mental illness in the first place. Joseph Garner, an associate professor of animal sciences, fed mice a diet high in sugar and tryptophan that was expected to reduce abnormal hair-pulling. Instead, mice that were already ill worsened their hair-pulling behaviors or started a new self-injurious scratching behavior, and the seemingly healthy mice developed the same abnormal ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – The Obama administration's decision to maintain a ban on oil drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts is a mistake, according to a University of Illinois expert who wrote a six-volume book series on marine pollution. "It's a ridiculous decision on the part of the Interior Department," said John W. Kindt, a professor of business and legal policy at Illinois. "The previous 180-day moratorium really hurt a lot of businesses. Well, a seven-year ban is going to sting even more." Kindt says giving the oil companies a ...

From atomic crystals to spiral galaxies, self-assembly is ubiquitous in nature. In biological processes, self-assembly at the molecular level is particularly prevalent. Phospholipids, for example, will self-assemble into a bilayer to form a cell membrane, and actin, a protein that supports and shapes a cell's structure, continuously self-assembles and disassembles during cell movement. Bioengineers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have been exploring a unique phenomenon whereby randomly dispersed microparticles self-assemble into ...

When you dive into that salad full of lettuce grown in the American West, there's a good chance you are enjoying the product of irrigation from an underground water source. These hidden groundwater systems are precious resources that need careful management, but regulatory groups have a hard time monitoring them, owing to a lack of accurate data. Now, scientists at Stanford have found a way to cheaply and effectively monitor aquifer levels in agricultural regions using data from satellites that are already in orbit mapping the shape of Earth's surface with millimeter ...

This past summer saw a revolution in melanoma therapy. Patients whose melanoma lesions contain a mutation in the BRAF gene were successfully treated with a BRAF-specific inhibitor, PLX4032. Reports of the drug trial described shrinking tumors and improved health. Yet seven months after therapy began the tumors returned and resumed growing. Now, scientists at The Wistar Institute explain why: the tumor learns to signal around the blocked gene by adjusting its molecular wiring. They also show how to overcome resistance by simultaneously targeting multiple signaling pathways. The ...

Stanford, CA— Plants are very sensitive to light conditions because light is their source of energy and also a signal that activates the special photoreceptors that regulate growth, metabolism, and physiological development. Scientists believe that these light signals control plant growth and development by activating or inhibiting plant hormones. New research from Carnegie plant biologists has altered the prevailing theory on how light signals and hormones interact. Their findings could have implications for food crop production. It was previously known that a plant ...

GREENBELT, Md. -- The size, background ecology, and development patterns of major northeastern cities combine to make them unusually warm, according to NASA scientists who presented new research today at an American Geophysical Union meeting, in San Francisco, Calif. Summer land surface temperatures of cities in the Northeast were an average of 13°F to 16°F (7°C to 9°C) warmer than surrounding rural areas over a three year period, the new research shows. The complex phenomenon that drives up temperatures of cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. is ...

ALBANY, Calif.—Forests in the southwestern United States are changing and will face reduced growth if temperatures continue to rise and precipitation declines during this century, according to a study conducted by a team of scientists from the U.S. Forest Service; University of California, Santa Barbara; U.S. Geological Survey; and University of Arizona. Their findings were released today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) special issue on climate change. Using tree-ring data and climate models, the team determined that rising temperatures and ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– If current climate projections hold true, the forests of the Southwestern United States face a bleak future, with more severe –– and more frequent –– forest fires, higher tree death rates, more insect infestation, and weaker trees. The findings by university and government scientists are published in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). "Our study shows that regardless of rainfall going up or down, forests in the Southwest U.S. are very sensitive to temperature –– in fact, more sensitive than any ...

It's colds and flu season, and as any parent knows, colds and flu spread like wildfire, especially through schools. New research using human-networking theory may give a clearer picture of just how, exactly, infectious diseases such as the common cold, influenza, whooping cough and SARS can spread through a closed group of people, and even through populations at large. With the help of 788 volunteers at a high school, Marcel Salathé, a biologist at Penn State University, developed a new technique to count the number of possible disease-spreading events that occur in ...

New York, 13 December 2010—A new report from the Women's HIV Prevention Tracking Project (WHiPT), a collaborative initiative of AVAC and the ATHENA Network, features an unprecedented collection of voices from Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland and Uganda reflecting on what male circumcision for HIV prevention means for women. It highlights women's perspectives, advocacy priorities and recommendations on this new prevention strategy. Making Medical Male Circumcision Work for Women is the first report from WHiPT, which was launched in 2009 to bring community perspectives, ...

WASHINGTON, DC, December 8, 2010 — In a country with Jim Crow segregation laws and the "one-drop rule" determining who was black and therefore where and what a person was permitted to be, it's easy to see why those who plausibly could, might pass as white. But new research published in the December issue of Social Psychology Quarterly shows that black-white biracial adults now exercise considerable control over how they identify and the authors find "a striking reverse pattern of passing today," with a majority of survey respondents reporting that they pass as black. Today's ...

WASHINGTON, DC, December 13, 2010 — Those who choose to pray find personalized comfort during hard times, according to a University of Wisconsin-Madison sociologist. The 75 percent of Americans who pray on a weekly basis do so to manage a range of negative situations and emotions — illness, sadness, trauma and anger — but just how they find relief has gone unconsidered by researchers. Through the course of in-depth interviews with dozens of victims of violent relationships with intimate partners, Shane Sharp, a graduate student studying sociology at UW-Madison, gathered ...

December 14, 2010, New York, NY—18.3 million men and women ages 50 to 64 stand to benefit from provisions in the Affordable Care Act that expand access to affordable health insurance, assure that all health insurance provides a standard comprehensive benefit, prevent insurers from denying coverage or charging higher premiums to people with pre-existing conditions, and eliminate lifetime and annual limits in health insurance policies, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report released today. Adults ages 50-64 are currently suffering the highest rates of longtime unemployment ...

Mad Hatter hat sales have remained strong despite Halloween having taken place over a month ago. This is the conclusion of a recent study completed by an online merchant of Halloween costumes. While more hats were sold in October than in any other month, people have continued to purchase top hats worn by the famous Mad Hatter from the Alice in Wonderland movie. Due in large part to the box office success of Tim Burton's recent version of the film, the Mad Hatter hat ( http://madhatterhats.net/ ) is becoming a popular item of clothing. "People are recognizing that the ...

James Prieto is the author of The Joy of Compassionate Connecting - The Way of Christ through Nonviolent Communication. His mission is to facilitate communication and contribute to deepening relationships between people, within groups and organizations, through the practice of Nonviolent Communication (NVC). Nonviolent Communication, also known as Compassionate Communication, was created by famed American psychologist Marshall Rosenberg. It is a conversational framework that invites listening from the heart, encouraging a letting-go of outcomes and judgments for the ...

Lanner Group, the business process improvement specialist, today announces a new contract with URENCO Limited, the international uranium enrichment firm, to provide an integrated custom designed system, enabling the energy and technology group to plan decades ahead and deliver on long-term commitments. URENCO is in the process of upgrading its entire SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems and technology. The company turned to Lanner Group when it found that it required a more specialist long-term operational and management system that would allow it to model ...

If it seems too difficult to find a personal and unique holiday gift for that special person, you will be surprised how easy it is to find that perfect gift for someone when you visit Sketch Maven. Sketch Maven is a marketplace where artists and collectors could buy and sell one-of-a-kind published original comic art, color guides and sketches. Original comic art are the original, one of a kind, pieces that were hand drawn by the comic book artist to create the final comic book. The audience for original comic art extends beyond comic collectors as it offers distinctive ...

In a recent survey of nearly 200 global financial consultants, almost 47.7 percent of respondents indicated that regional players are the predominant lender in their respective region. The poll was conducted during a webinar presented by Merrill DataSite, in association with mergermarket, called, "Driving the Comeback of M&A: A report examining the current and future M&A landscape." "An in-depth look at the original survey results reveals that respondents' answers vary by region," said Richard Martin, senior director of Merrill DataSite. "For example, a majority of respondents ...

Posts by Heather on Genxxl additional reading- Eating well can be confusing, especially when it seems we're assaulted every day with new super foods that are hard to pronounce and even harder on the pocketbook. What makes a food super? Super foods are nutrient dense while being sparse in calories. They have antioxidants in abundance and usually meet the RDA of a vital nutrient in a single serving. In short, they are some of the healthiest foods on the planet. You don't have to spend your entire paycheck on a recently discovered food from the Amazon to achieve vibrant ...

Chef Michael calls it the next step towards being an all around culinary personality. Social Media is zeitgeist. Being media savvy has always been one of chef Michael's strong points. Finding another media aperture which he can use to tell a culinary-related story was just a matter of time. Now Michael is announcing his new column on Examiner dot com. This column called "Cooking in Miami" is going to become a part of his next book that will be released this winter. His new book - "Culture of Cuisine" - will cover what it is like being a chef, the ideals a chef has ...

Warren Whitlock, author of Twitter Revolution: How Social Media and Mobile Marketing is Changing the Way We Do Business & Market Online will speak during the Social Media is Action session of the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7th, 2011. "The social media revolution in business and marketing has just begun." Said Marketing Strategist Warren Whitlock. "We have seen large changes in technology and media over the past few years, but are only now beginning to see the impact on retail, distribution and manufacturing that will continue in the coming decade" Social Media ...