Sept. 28, 2010 — The National Research Council today released its assessment of U.S. doctoral programs, which includes data on over 5,000 programs in 62 fields at 212 universities nationwide. The assessment is designed to help universities evaluate and improve the quality of their programs and to provide prospective students with information on the nation's doctoral programs. (See Full Report) "This report and its large collection of quantitative data will become in our view an important and transparent instrument for strengthening doctoral education in the United States," ...

Being allergic to dogs or cats may worsen your ragweed allergies, according to a study from Queen's University. Researchers found that people with pet allergies often develop ragweed allergy symptoms more quickly than others. But the study also suggests that once allergy season is in full swing, those symptom differences subside. The team, led by Anne Ellis, an assistant professor in the departments of medicine and microbiology & immunology, exposed 123 participants to ragweed, and noted that pet allergy sufferers reported symptoms differently than their non-animal ...

PITTSBURGH—In the first population-based survey to indicate a racial disparity in the psychological abuse of senior citizens, University of Pittsburgh researchers found that African American seniors could be twice as likely to be mistreated than elders of other races. The survey also revealed that African American elders could be up to five times more susceptible to being swindled. Reporting the survey results in The Gerontologist, the researchers urged that health care and social service workers be especially vigilant for the possible mistreatment of African American seniors. Lead ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers have created a computer model that predicts how a disaster's impact on critical infrastructure would affect a city's social and economic fabric, a potential tool to help reduce the severity of impacts, manage the aftermath of catastrophe and fortify infrastructure against future disasters. "The model works for any type of disaster that influences the infrastructure," said Makarand Hastak, head of construction engineering and management and a professor of civil engineering at Purdue University. "If we can identify in advance the most ...

In a recent keynote address before the Kavli Science Forum: 2010 in Oslo, Dr. John P. Holdren -- science advisor to U.S. President Barack Obama -- provided insight into why climate change is a priority to the Obama administration, and pressed the need for an international effort to mitigate, and adapt to, what he termed the effects of "global climate disruption." "We cannot solve the great problems of our time alone - any of us - as individual nations," he stated. "We need to solve them together, and science and technology pursued together are going to be immensely important ...

In a very large cohort of African-American women in the US, the association between the consumption of alcohol, tea, and coffee and the development of type 2 diabetes mellitus (late onset diabetes) was studied for 12 years. Tea and decaffeinated coffee showed no relation with diabetes, but the regular moderate intake of both caffeinated coffee and alcohol appeared to reduce the risk of contracting late onset diabetes significantly. This paper is particularly important because some previous studies have not shown a strong association between alcohol and the risk of ...

(Boston) - Researchers from Boston Medical Center (BMC) and Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) have found that individuals who do not speak English at home are less likely to receive colorectal cancer screenings (CRC) as compared to those who do speak English at home. The findings, which currently appear on-line in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, suggest that patient-provider language barriers play a role in health-care disparities, and that providers should promote the importance of CRC screening to non-English speaking patients. The United States ...

AUDIO: A new University of Michigan study shows how fight styles affect marriage. Click here for more information. ANN ARBOR, Mich.---It's common knowledge that newlyweds who yell or call each other names have a higher chance of getting divorced. But a new University of Michigan study shows that other conflict patterns also predict divorce. A particularly toxic pattern is when one spouse deals with conflict constructively, by calmly discussing the situation, listening to their ...

Melbourne, Australia—September 28, 2010— In recent years, several guidelines in the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder have been put into practice globally. Practice guidelines across the health sphere are very important in guiding the care people receive. Although there is a high level of consensus on these guidelines among practitioners, there are also differences that can lead to confusion among providers, patients, and purchasers of mental health services for people affected by trauma. A new article in the Journal of Traumatic Stress written by the international ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – As the U.S. economy continues to lag, many investors remain wary about taking risks with the stock market. Now, researchers at MU have concluded that this attitude toward investment risk-taking is more than just a recent trend. Rui Yao, a University of Missouri assistant professor in the Personal Financial Planning department in the College of Human Environmental Sciences, has found that during the past two decades, the risk tolerance of investors is positively correlated to the movements of the stock market, meaning that investors are likely to invest more ...

NASA's Aqua satellite has peered into the cloud tops of System 96L in the western Caribbean early this morning and noticed that they've become colder and higher, which indicated the storms was strengthening and organizing. Just over eight hours later, the new Tropical Depression 16 was born, and now has the potential to become a tropical storm before it merges with an elongated area of low pressure near the Florida late on Wednesday. Tropical Depression 16 was officially named this morning, Sept. 28 at 11 a.m. EDT by NOAA's National Hurricane Center in Miami, Fla. Many ...

Imagine building a car chassis without a blueprint or even a list of recommended construction materials. In a sense, that's precisely what a team of engineers at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., did when they designed a one-of-a-kind structure that is one of 9 key new technology systems of the Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM). Just as a chassis supports the engine and other components in a car, the ISIM will hold four highly sensitive instruments, electronics, and other shared instrument systems flying on the James Webb Space Telescope, ...

GREENBELT, Md. -- NASA engineers have created a unique engineering marvel called the ISIM structure that recently survived exposure to extreme cryogenic temperatures, proving that the structure will remain stable when exposed to the harsh environment of space. The material that comprises the structure, as well as the bonding techniques used to join its roughly 900 structural components, were all created from scratch. The ISIM, or the Integrated Science Instrument Module Flight Structure, will serve as the structural "heart" of the James Webb Space Telescope. The ISIM ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---A study of employees at a west Michigan hospital showed some of the most unhealthy workers that University of Michigan researchers had ever seen. But in four years, the workplace wellness plan at Allegiance Health in Jackson, Mich. had fueled some of the biggest improvements in employee health that those same researchers had ever witnessed. The researchers were studying the hospital system to evaluate the health risk changes in employees in the four years after Allegiance implemented a workplace wellness program. The "It's Your Life" program was ...

Washington, D.C. (September 28, 2010) -- The second law of thermodynamics is a big hit with the beret-wearing college crowd because of its implicit existential crunch. The tendency of a closed systems to become increasingly disordered if no energy is added or removed is a popular, if not depressing, "things fall apart" sort-of-law that would seem to confirm the adolescent experience. Now a joint team of Ukrainian and American scientists has demanded more work and less poetry from the second law of thermodynamics, proposing a novel "pyroelectric" method to power tiny ...

Washington, D.C. (September 28, 2010) -- A new disposable device based on advances in microfluidics may help identify advanced breast cancer patients who are candidates for therapy with the drug trastuzumab (Herceptin). The device is described in the American Institute of Physics' journal Biomicrofluidics. Aggressive breast cancers with poor prognosis typically have abnormal levels of the protein HER2 (the tyrosine kinase human epidermal growth factor receptor 2). The new elastomeric, rubber-like device is designed to efficiently capture cancer cells overexpressing HER2 ...

Washington, D.C. (September 28, 2010) -- Polymer-based photovoltaic cells have some real advantages compared to the currently used semiconductor-based cells. They are easy to make and the materials are cheap. The challenge is to figure out how to make efficient cells while keeping the manufacturing cost low. One approach uses a light-absorbing polymer along with a derivative of a sixty-carbon fullerene molecule, commonly known as a buckyball. For maximum efficiency, the two materials must be present in thin layers near opposite electrodes but most analytical methods ...

Professor Sonia Ghumman from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa Shidler College of Business has completed an intensive marketing research on the effects of Muslim women who wear hijabs (head scarves) in the U.S. Ghumman's research examined the expectations that women who wear hijabs have regarding their employment opportunities. "We surveyed 219 American Muslim women on their job seeking experience," said Ghumman. "The findings reveal that Hijabis are not only aware of their stigma of being Muslim, but also expect to be treated differently in the workplace as a result ...

Grand Rapids, Mich. (September 28, 2010) – New findings from Van Andel Research Institute (VARI) scientists could lead to environmentally-friendly sprays that help plants survive drought and other stresses in harsh environments to combat global food shortages. The study is a follow-up to findings published in Nature last year that were named among the top breakthroughs of 2009 by Science magazine. "I think that the work established the methodologies and feasibilities of finding cheap and environmentally benign chemicals for agricultural application to improve the water ...

A global temperature increase of up to 4.2 º C and the end of coral reefs could become reality by 2100 if national targets are not revised in the Copenhagen Accord, the international pledge which was agreed at last year's Copenhagen's COP15 climate change conference. Just ahead of the next United Nations Climate Change Conference, which starts on 4 October in Tianjin, China, a new report published today, Wednesday, 29 September, in IOP Publishing's Environmental Research Letters describes how, due to lack of global action to date, only a small chance remains for keeping ...

In a recently published study in the journal Addiction, researchers from Bowling Green State University report evidence of an association between father's incarceration and substantially elevated risks for illegal drug use in adolescence and early adulthood. The number of persons incarcerated in the United States has sharply risen over the past several decades, from about 250,000 in 1975 to 2,250,000 in 2006. So too has the number of children with incarcerated parents, particularly fathers. The consequences of father's incarceration for their children, families, and communities ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Twelve years ago, then 28-year-old graduate student Brian Zikmund-Fisher was forced into the toughest choice of his life: Die from a blood disorder within a few years or endure a bone marrow transplant that could cure him or kill him in weeks. Zikmund-Fisher, now an assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health specializing in health communication, chose to gamble. After nine months of blood transfusions, a bone marrow match was found in Australia. Zikmund-Fisher spent another month in isolation until his new immune system ...

Home owners using the new Solar Home Loan Calculator can determine how to leverage their home equity to install solar power and gain a secure and cheap power source, said ZEN Home Energy Systems Chief Executive Officer, Richard Turner. "We've known for some time now it is cheaper to produce your own energy at home than buy, but one of the biggest barriers facing householders is finding the cash to finance installation of a whole home solar energy system," Mr Turner said. "Currently the only other solar funding alternatives in the market are consumer finance packages ...

Professor Ewart Keep. ESRC Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance (SKOPE). Professor Ewart Keep's research interests include the links between skills and economic performance (broadly defined), the education and training policy formation process, employers' perceptions of training and the factors that influence their willingness to invest in skills, 14-19 vocational education and training, higher education policy and the graduate labour market, lifelong learning, and the linkages between skills and people management issues. Dr Scott Hurrell. University ...

It is 88 days before Christmas and Warplanes is throwing away an early Christmas gift for all their Facebook fans and Twitter followers! They are giving away beautiful hand-made models of the F-15E Strike Eagle, F-16 Fighting Falcon and an Apache Longbow AH-64D through their blogging and twitting contest. "Blog, Grab and Brag" Warplanes.com's Win a Model Airplane Contest are for Facebook fanatics and bloggers. To join, one must post a blog article stating the reason(s) on why he/she should win. A link to the entry should be posted on Warplanes' fan page wall. Started ...