News Articles

A new study of a protein found in cilia - the hair-like projections on the cell surface - may help explain how genetic defects in cilia play a role in developmental abnormalities, kidney disease and a number of other disorders.
The researchers at Princeton University and Northwestern University found that the protein, which goes by the name C21orf59 or "Kurly," is needed for cilia to undulate to keep fluid moving over the surface of cells. They also found that the protein is needed during development to properly orient the cilia so that they are facing the right direction to move the fluid.

The Louisiana Scholarship Program has widely varying effects on students, according to a series of studies released jointly by the School Choice Demonstration Project at the University of Arkansas and the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans at Tulane University.
The studies address the effects of the Louisiana voucher program on the achievement and non-cognitive skills of voucher recipients, as well as broader effects on school segregation and public school students. It is the first evaluation to examine such a wide range of outcomes, or to consider the effects over the first two years of this specific program. Key findings include:

For the first time experts have been able to eliminate external factors and specifically pinpoint television as having a direct link with female body ideals.
It is known that the perception of a woman's perfect body shape is influenced by images of celebrities and models seen in the media.
However, in the past, there has been little attempt to control variables in order to isolate the effects of media exposure from other cultural and ecological factors.
Scientists examined preferences for body size in relation to television consumption of men and women in Nicaragua, Central America. Findings are published in the British Journal of Psychology.

Use of positron emission tomography (PET) showed no association with two-year survival in lung and esophageal cancer patients and may possibly be overused in the hopes of detecting cancer recurrence, according to a study published February 22 in the JNCI: Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
PET scans, which are primarily used in cancer patients for staging, restaging, and monitoring patients' response, are also frequently used to detect recurrence in asymptomatic patients. Despite this frequent secondary use, there has been little evidence showing that PET scans improve survival.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Images of disease and suffering should move smokers to kick the habit - at least, that's the thinking behind graphic warning labels used on cigarette packages in much of the world, and maybe someday in the U.S.
According to a University of Illinois study, however, "the good intentions of this tobacco control measure may be for naught."

A ring that continuously releases an experimental antiretroviral drug in the vagina safely provided a modest level of protection against HIV infection in women, a large clinical trial in four sub-Saharan African countries has found. The ring reduced the risk of HIV infection by 27 percent in the study population overall and by 61 percent among women ages 25 years and older, who used the ring most consistently.
These results were announced today at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Boston and simultaneously published online in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Some colleges have called for the banning of Yik Yak, is a hyperloca social media application in which users centered around a geographic area can post anonymously. They want to ban it because it can be used to do a lot of positive things, but also some negative ones, like posting threats and racial slurs. Or conspire in terrorist acts, logically.
Before academia should ban for all to protect a few, there needs to be a
broader, more systematic analysis of Yik Yak's postings rather than assuming the worst, write scholars in Computers in Human Behavior.
In a modern world where students need to be protected from language, why allow profanity?

In the 21st century, it seems to be settled that quotas are a bad idea. By picking people based on a characteristic outside their ability to best do a job, it seems to be another term for discrimination. 
Some countries have done it anyway. Mexico, for example, passed quotas to create equal gender representation in government but a new social studies paper concludes that the quality of female candidates did not go down, nor did women rely on personal connections more than men to get elected.

New research reveals that the evolutionary history of glyptodonts -- huge, armored mammals that went extinct in the Americas at the end of the last ice age -- is unexpectedly brief. The work, published this week in the journal Current Biology by an international team of researchers, confirms that glyptodonts likely originated less than 35 million years ago from ancestors within lineages leading directly to one of the modern armadillo families. More surprising still, the study finds that the closest relatives of glyptodonts -- some species of which may have weighed two tons or more -- include not only the giant armadillo (Priodontes maximus), which can weigh up to 25 pounds, but also the four-ounce pink fairy armadillo, or pichiciego (Chlamyphorus truncatus).

The types of beneficial fungi that associate with tree roots can alter the fate of a patch of tropical forest, boosting plant diversity or, conversely, giving one tree species a distinct advantage over many others, finds a study in Ecology Letters which sought to explain a baffling phenomenon in some tropical forests: Small patches of "monodominant forest," where one species makes up more than 60 percent of the trees, form islands of low diversity in the otherwise highly diverse tropical forest growing all around them.
The new study focused on mountain forests in Panama that harbor hundreds of tree species, but which include small patches dominated by the tree species Oreomunnea mexicana.

New research conducted by Plymouth University shows that young women with high emotional intelligence (EI) are more likely to use manipulative behaviours, resulting in a greater engagement in delinquency.
The research, led by Dr Alison Bacon, Lecturer in Psychology, was conducted to assess why young women with high levels of EI are more likely to engage in antisocial behaviour than young men - a conclusion drawn from her 2014 paper, 'Sex differences in the relationship between sensation seeking, trait emotional intelligence and delinquent behaviour'.

Public health measures to reduce smoking would have more success if policy makers intervened to curb the vast profitability of the tobacco industry, say University researchers.
The lucrative nature of the cigarette market, dominated by a small number of large shareholder-owned companies, results in a vigorous fight against any new public health measures that may disrupt their profit-making.
The researchers from the University of Bath and University of Ottawa say governments should look to the success of past policies that have transitioned other industries towards products that are less harmful to health, such as the switch from leaded to unleaded petrol.