Body

Social rejection isn't just emotionally upsetting; it also upsets your heart. A new study finds that being rejected by another person makes your heart rate drop for a moment. The study is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Research has shown that the brain processes physical and social pain in some of the same regions. Bregtje Gunther Moor, Eveline A. Crone, and Maurits W. van der Molen of the University of Amsterdam and Leiden University in the Netherlands wanted to find out how social pain affects you physically.

DENVER — Researchers believe there may be a way to predict, based on individual tumors, those patients that are more likely to respond to the investigational new drug tivozanib.

This is possible, the researchers from AVEO Pharmaceuticals, Inc. said, because they have used a new way of creating animal tumor models that mimic tumor variation seen in human. Based on the results of these studies, they have found a single biomarker that may predict resistance to tivozanib, an oral, triple VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor) receptor inhibitor.

RUSTON, La. – Geopolymer concrete, an innovative and environmentally-friendly building material developed at Louisiana Tech University's Trenchless Technology Center (TTC), will be featured in a transportation exhibition taking place at the Detroit Science Center.

Developed by Dr. Erez Allouche, research director for the TTC, and his team, geopolymer concrete is an emerging class of cementitious materials that utilize "fly ash", one of the most abundant industrial by-products, as a substitute for Portland cement, the most widely produced man-made material on earth.

Philadelphia, PA, September 28, 2010 – The Epinephrine Roundtable was convened during the 25th Annual Meeting of the Wilderness Medical Society (WMS) in 2008 to explore areas of consensus and uncertainty in the field treatment of anaphylaxis. The panel endorsed the administration of epinephrine to treat anaphylaxis in the field under emergency conditions by trained non-medical professionals. Anaphylaxis, an acute allergic reaction, is sudden in onset and requires immediate treatment.

'Firefly' stem cells may help repair damaged hearts

Stem cells that glow like fireflies could someday help doctors heal damaged hearts without cutting into patients' chests.

A new study by University of Notre Dame ecologist Jennifer Tank and colleagues reveals that streams throughout the Midwest are receiving transgenic materials from corn crop byproducts, even six months after harvest.

Transgenic maize (corn) has been genetically engineered to produce its own insecticide, a delta endotoxin from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). Bt endotoxins deter crop pests, such as the European corn borer.

A black, two-millimeter-long wasp from East Africa is helping wage war on one of its own kind—the Erythrina gall wasp, an invasive species that's decimated Hawaii's endemic wiliwili (Erythrina sandwicensis) and introduced coral bean trees (Erythrina spp.).

Researchers from North Carolina State University have identified a "tipping point" for national debt – the point at which national debt levels begin to have an adverse effect on economic growth. The findings could influence economic policy discussions globally, and will be distributed at the upcoming meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Group.

September 28, 2010 (Geneva, Switzerland) – At the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) summit in New York this week, world leaders gathered to review progress on the eight goals agreed in 2000 on alleviating world poverty and ill-health by 2015. As the summit came to a close, governments, businesses and aid organisations made commitments totaling $40bn to reach the goals, with particular emphasis on improving maternal and child health.

Guest relationships can become collateral damage when hotel employees envy the relationships co-workers have with their bosses, according to an international team of researchers.

New York, USA - The number of people suffering from chronic hunger reached a record one billion globally in 2009, with Asia accounting for approximately two-thirds of the world's hungry.

In response, the Asia Society and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) have released an action plan to address food insecurity in Asia, with an emphasis on rice, the region's staple.

The Task Force's report, Never an Empty Bowl: Sustaining Food Security in Asia, outlines a strategy focused on three key areas:

Pharmaceutical substances found in waters of Donana

Researchers from the University of Seville (US) have detected active pharmaceutical substances for the first time in the waters of the Doñana National Park and its surrounding areas. The results suggest eco-toxicological risks for aquatic organisms. The scientists recommend that advanced technologies should be used to treat urban waste water in order to remove these compounds.

Climate change hits southeast Australia fish species

Scientists are reporting significant changes in the distribution of coastal fish species in south-east Australia which they say are partly due to climate change.

Solar cells thinner than wavelengths of light hold huge power potential

In the smooth, white, bunny-suited clean-room world of silicon wafers and solar cells, it turns out that a little roughness may go a long way, perhaps all the way to making solar power an affordable energy source, say Stanford engineers.

Australian and American scientists have found a way of shrinking tumours in certain cancers – a finding that provides hope for new treatments.

The cancers in question are those caused by a new class of genes known as 'microRNAs', produced by parts of the genome that, until recently, were dismissed as 'junk DNA'. While much is still unknown about microRNAs, it is clear that they can interfere with how our genes are 'read'.