One of astronomy's big questions is why galaxies forming as recently as 1 billion years after the Big Bang contain so much dust. The leading hypothesis is that supernovae, stars that explode at the end of their lives, contain large amounts of metal-enriched material that, in turn, harbors key ingredients of dust, like silicon, iron and carbon.
When a marriage that has included violence ends, is co-parenting possible? It depends on whether intimate terrorism or situational violence was involved, says a new University of Illinois study published in Family Relations.
"There's a tendency to treat all violence as if it's the same, but different types of violence require different interventions," said Jennifer Hardesty, a U of I assistant professor of human and community development.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- A new vaccine has the potential to be the first to prevent maternal and congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection, according to a University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) study published in the March 19 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Each year in the US, nearly 30,000 babies are born with congenital CMV, the most common virus transmitted by a pregnant woman to her unborn child, and nearly 8,000 of these children suffer permanent hearing, cognitive or motor impairments.
Although the first vaccine trials for CMV took place nearly 30 years ago, an effective vaccine has remained elusive.
Hippos spend lots of time in the water and now it turns out (or researchers argue), they are the closest living relative to whales. It also turns out, the two are swimming in a bit of controversy.
Jessica Theodor, an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Calgary, and her colleague Jonathan Geisler, associate professor at Georgia Southern University are disputing a recent study that creates a different family tree for the hippo.
ATLANTA— Although paying finder's fees to researchers and clinicians to identify study participants could compromise the recruitment process and harm human lives, many medical schools fail to address this conflict of interest in their Institutional Review Board (IRB) policies.
Leslie Wolf, an associate professor of law at Georgia State University, studied the IRB policies posted on the Web sites of 117 medical schools that received National Institutes of Health funding. Among the study's findings, Wolf revealed that less than half of the IRB policies discuss finder's fees or bonus payments as conflicts of interest, where research sponsors pay members of the research team or clinicians to identify potential participants or for meeting predetermined enrollment targets.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Humans excel at recognizing faces, but how we do this has been an abiding mystery in neuroscience and psychology. In an effort to explain our success in this area, researchers are taking a closer look at how and why we fail.
A new study from MIT looks at a particularly striking instance of failure: our impaired ability to recognize faces in photographic negatives. The study, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week, suggests that a large part of the answer might lie in the brain's reliance on a certain kind of image feature.
Providing another tool to help to understand gene regulation on a global scale, a nationwide research team has identified and mapped 55,000 enhancers, short regions of DNA that act to enhance or boost the expression of genes. The map, which will be published March 18 in the advance on-line edition of the journal Nature, will help scientists understand how cells control expression of genes specific to their particular cell type.
Being satisfied with one's appearance is one of the most important prerequisites for a positive self image. However, in today's appearance culture it is the rule rather than the exception that children and young people are dissatisfied with their appearance.
Those children who are teased or subject to bullying are particularly critical of their appearance - and they tend to be this way over a long period. This is revealed in a new thesis in psychology from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
In her thesis Carolina Lunde has followed almost 1,000 children between the ages of 10 and 14. The aim has been to investigate the link between body image and peer group relationships.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Trainers have used it for decades to help athletes build muscle. Late-night TV commercials hawk it as an effortless flab buster.
But a University of Florida engineering researcher says electrical stimulation — a simple, decades-old technique to prompt muscles to contract — can be combined with sophisticated computer learning technology to help people regain more precise, more life-like control of paralyzed limbs.
Although his research is still exploring the fundamentals, his progress so far suggests computer-adapted electrical stimulation could one day help the estimated 700,000 Americans who suffer from strokes and the 11,000 who suffer from cord injuries annually.
Athens, Ga. – A new study by psychologists at the University of Georgia shows for the first time that whites' beliefs about diversity can hurt or help their minority peers.
The large-scale survey results, just published in the online version of the journal Psychological Science, reveal that minority employees feel less committed to their work when white employees promote "colorblindness." Yet when white workers champion multiculturalism, the research finds, their minority peers feel more connected to their jobs.
New Orleans, LA – Research conducted by Allison Berrier, PhD, Assistant Professor of Oral and Craniofacial Biology at the LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans School of Dentistry, and colleagues, provides insights that may help scientists design novel approaches to control wound healing and fight diseases such as cancer and fibrosis. The paper, β1 Integrin Cytoplasmic Domain Residues Selectively Modulate Fibronectin Matrix Assembly and Cell Spreading through Talin and Akt-1, will be published in the March 20, 2009 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry. The research team also included Drs. J. Angelo Green and Kenneth Yamada at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, as well as Dr. Roumen Pankov at Sofia University in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers are investigating a new way to block reproduction of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) – targeting not the virus itself but the human genes the virus exploits in its life cycle. In the March 19 Cell Host & Microbe, they report finding nearly 100 genes that support the replication of HCV and show that blocking several of them can suppress viral replication in cultured cells.
"We identified a large number of genes that have not been previously known to be involved in hepatitis C replication," says Raymond Chung, MD, director of Hepatology in the MGH Gastrointestinal Unit, the study's senior author.
MANHATTAN -- A Kansas State University researcher has found a link between physical and mental well-being that employees and employers may be able to capitalize on to improve both the health, and potentially the wealth, of their organization in these turbulent economic times.
Thomas A. Wright, Jon Wefald Leadership Chair in Business Administration and professor of management at K-State, published his findings on the relationship between employee psychological well-being and cardiovascular health in the February issue of the Journal of Organizational Behavior.
