News Articles

Everyone has at least a few non-negotiable values. These are the things that, no matter what the circumstance, you'd never compromise for any reason - such as "I'd never hurt a child," or "I'm against the death penalty."
Real-time brain scans show that when people read stories that deal with these core, protected values, the "default mode network" in their brains activates.
This network was once thought of as just the brain's autopilot, since it has been shown to be active when you're not engaged by anything in the outside world - but studies like this one suggest that it's actually working to find meaning in the narratives.

When you have a fever, your nose is stuffed and your headache is spreading to your toes, your body is telling you to stay home in bed. Feeling sick is an evolutionary adaptation according to a hypothesis put forward by Prof. Guy Shakhar of the Weizmann Institute's Immunology Department and Dr. Keren Shakhar of the Psychology Department of the College of Management Academic Studies, in a recent paper published in PLoS Biology.

In 2009, there was concern that American health care costs were too high. Since the advent of the Affordable Care Act, there is now concern that costs are really too high, only it is not rich doctors and insurance companies being vilified, it is defensive medicine and doctors being willing to sign off on unnecessary things to keep patients happy which, along with lawsuits, was the problem the whole time.
A study in the American Journal of Managed Care finds that more than half of primary care providers reported that they made what they considered unnecessary referrals to a specialist because patients wanted it and many physicians gave into patient requests for brand-name drugs when cheaper generics were available.

While expanding a reservoir in Snowmass Village, Colorado, construction workers stumbled upon a big bone. And then another, and another, and another. 

Killer whales eat 375 pounds of food per day. Now imagine most of that is salmon, the food source they most often in the summer, and you can imagine how devastating that can be to the salmon population of the Pacific Northwest if such whales were higher population. That's equivalent salmon each day to what 200 Americans for a year (300,000 metric tons per year total consumption.)
Salmon is currently the third most popular fish in the United States (behind shrimp and tuna) and one third of it comes from Pacific salmon, both farmed and in the wild. 
The determination about diets was made using an analysis of fish DNA in killer whale poop.

A new Cochrane Review published today shows that targeting exercises to muscles that support and control the spine offers another strategy to reduce pain and disability caused by lower back pain.
Lower back pain is one of the most common health conditions worldwide. It can have substantial health and economic costs as people experience disability and general ill health, leading them to need time off work.

It may not be sexism that keeps more women from top jobs, it may be less understanding of the role of social capital in reaching the top, according to graduate student Natasha Abajian of City University London at the British Psychological Society's Division of Occupational Psychology annual conference in Nottingham.

In industrialized countries, a particularly high number of people suffer from arteriosclerosis -- with fatal consequences: Deposits in the arteries lead to strokes and heart attacks. A team of researchers under the leadership of the University of Bonn has now developed a method for guiding replacement cells to diseased vascular segments using nanoparticles. The scientists demonstrated in mice that the fresh cells actually exert their curative effect in these segments. However, much research remains to be done prior to use in humans. The results are now being published in the renowned journal ACS NANO.

New research finds that bile acids which are altered by bacteria normally living in the large intestine inhibit the growth of Clostridium difficile, or C. diff. C. diff is a harmful bacterium that can cause painful and sometimes fatal infections.

Urban elites tend to think being fat and dumb is a rural problem but studies show just the opposite; that is why so many health planners want to add more parks and places for people to walk, it emulates country life more.
Genetics are somewhat important, it impacts how many calories someone can eat given their metabolism, but social environment is a big factor. Since agricultural science has made it possible for poor people be fat, that is exactly what has happened, and not just in America. Obesity has risen dramatically in Europe as well. 

Scientists from the Mechanobiology Institute, Singapore (MBI) at the National University of Singapore have discovered the universal building blocks that cells use to form initial connections with the surrounding environment. These early adhesions have a consistent size of 100 nanometres, are made up of a cluster of around 50 integrin proteins and are the same even when the surrounding surface is hard or soft. Deciphering the universal nature of adhesion formation may reveal how tumour cells sense and migrate on surfaces of different rigidity, which is a hallmark of metastasis, the devastating ability of cancer to spread throughout the body. This study was published in the 7 December 2015 issue of Developmental Cell.

Building blocks for cell adhesion

Even before they can read, children as young as 3 years of age are beginning to understand how a written word is different than a simple drawing -- a nuance that could provide an important early indicator for children who may need extra help with reading lessons, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis.
"Our results show that children have some knowledge about the fundamental properties of writing from a surprisingly early age," said study co-author Rebecca Treiman, PhD, the Burke & Elizabeth High Baker Professor of Child Developmental Psychology in Arts & Sciences.