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.
Las Vegas, NV—March 18, 2009—With 17 percent of US children between ages 2 and 19 classified as obese, new research shows that parents may not be recognizing their own children's risk factors. A new study in the Journal of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners shows that parents are likely to misperceive their child's weight – especially those parents who are overweight themselves.
Although not having many close friends contributes to poorer health for many older adults, those who also feel lonely face even greater health risks, research at the University of Chicago suggests. Older people who are able to adjust to being alone don't have the same health problems.
The study is the first to examine the relationships between health and two different types of isolation. Researchers measured the degree to which older adults are socially connected and socially active. They also assessed whether older adults feel lonely and whether they expect that friends and family would help them in times of need.
COLUMBUS, Ohio – While depression is often linked to negative thoughts and emotions, a new study suggests the real problem may be a failure to appreciate positive experiences.
Researchers at Ohio State University found that depressed and non-depressed people were about equal in their ability to learn negative information that was presented to them.
But depressed people weren't nearly as successful at learning positive information as were their non-depressed counterparts.
LA JOLLA, Calif., March 18, 2009 -- Investigators at Burnham Institute for Medical Research (Burnham) have learned that a protein called Shp2 plays a critical role in the pathways that control decisions for differentiation or self-renewal in both human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs).
An important new study challenges the widespread perception that bulimia primarily affects privileged, white teenagers such as "Gossip Girl" character Blair Waldorf, who battled bulimia on the show earlier this season.
Rather, girls who are African American are 50 percent more likely than girls who are white to be bulimic, the researchers found, and girls from families in the lowest income bracket studied are 153 percent more likely to be bulimic than girls from the highest income bracket.
"As it turns out, we learned something surprising from our data about who bulimia actually affects, not just who is diagnosed," says USC economist Michelle Goeree.
Terrorist organizations sometimes have an advantage in the media. A new study by Dr. Yaniv Levyatan of the University of Haifa, published in the journal of Israel's National Security College, describes how our side can regain the advantage in this arena too.
Scientists have long contended that the Antarctic Peninsula is one of the most rapidly warming spots on Earth. Now, new research using detailed satellite data indicates that the changing climate is affecting not just the penguins at the apex of the food chain, but simultaneously the microscopic life that is the base of the ecosystem.
Patients with advanced cancer who used their religious faith to help cope were more likely to receive intensive life-prolonging medical care such as mechanical ventilation or cardiopulmonary resuscitation during their last week of life, according to a study in the March 18 issue of JAMA.
Compared to placebo, the drug pactimibe did not effect certain measures of atherosclerosis for patients with familial hypercholesterolemia (high cholesterol levels), but these patients did have an increased incidence of cardiovascular events such as heart attack and stroke, according to a study in the March 18 issue of JAMA.
Dangling a lucrative financial carrot at the end of a professional sport season can cause certain players to exert the effort necessary to put together a string of successful performances, sometimes known in sporting circles as a "hot hand" or "hot streak."
That's the result of a forthcoming study by North Carolina State University economists to be published in the Journal of Sports Economics.
San Diego, CA (March 18, 2009) – Epidemiologists and computer scientists at the University of Iowa have collaborated to create a new low-cost, green technology for automatically tracking the use of hand hygiene dispensers before healthcare workers enter and after they exit patient rooms. This novel method of monitoring hand hygiene compliance, which is essential for infection control in hospitals, was released today at the annual meeting of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA).
