It may not be obvious, but hearing two languages regularly during pregnancy puts infants on the road to bilingualism by birth. According to new findings in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, infants born to bilingual mothers (who spoke both languages regularly during pregnancy) exhibit different language preferences than infants born to mothers speaking only one language.
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CLEMSON, S.C. — Clemson University researchers have developed a hands-free alternative to cell phone texting while driving.
"If you can't keep people from doing it, make it safer," said Juan Gilbert, professor and chairman of the human-centered computing division of Clemson's School of Computing.
Agricultural Research Service (ARS)-funded scientists have reported new reasons for choosing "heart-healthy" oats at the grocery store.
Nutritionist Mohsen Meydani, director of the Vascular Biology Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston, Mass., led the research on the oat compounds, called avenanthramides. Meydani previously has shown that phenolic antioxidants in oats obstruct the ability of blood cells to stick to artery walls.
Badly fitting condoms are not only likely to split and break, but they may also reduce sexual pleasure for both partners, suggests a study published in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections.
The researchers base their findings on 436 men between the ages of 18 and 67, all of whom were recruited via newspaper ads and a blog on the website of a condom sales company.
Migraine headache affects many people and a number of different preventative strategies should be considered, states an article in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) (pre-embargo link only) http://www.cmaj.ca/embargo/cmaj081657.pdf. The article, a primer for physicians, outlines various treatments and approaches for migraine headaches.
The preferences of pet owners should not replace the well-being of their fellow passengers, states an editorial in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) (pre-embargo link only) http://www.cmaj.ca/embargo/cmaj100100.pdf. Pets can be accommodated comfortably and safely in airplane cargo holds, which is where they belong. Airlines must choose to put the needs of their human passengers first, or be forced to do so.
The ability of tissue cells to stick to one another is critical for many physiological and pathological processes. But normal living cells need to do much more than just hold on tight, they must monitor their environment and respond with appropriate changes in shape, migration, and proliferation. Now, a new study published online on February 16th by Cell Press in the Biophysical Journal provides intriguing insight into how mechanical interaction with the external environment influences cell shape and the forces generated by a cell's internal "skeleton".
WILMINGTON, Del.—Feb. 16, 2010—Cancer, the peer-reviewed international journal of the American Cancer Society, has published a study conducted by HealthCore, Inc. in its Jan. 1 edition, demonstrating disparities in breast cancer treatment between commercially insured African-American and white women.
The HealthCore study reiterates the findings of previous studies — conducted in populations using government health programs — that African-American women are diagnosed in later stages of the disease.
Irvine, Calif., Feb. 16, 2010 – Butterfly experts have suspected for more than 150 years that vision plays a key role in explaining wing color diversity. Now, for the first time, research led by UC Irvine biologists proves this theory true – at least in nine Heliconius species.
An inexpensive, fast, accurate DNA test that reveals a person's risk of developing certain diseases is expected to become a reality, thanks to technology developed at the University of Edinburgh.
Scientists have developed a method of pinpointing variations in a person's genetic code at critical points along the DNA chain. The technique could be used to analyse DNA in a drop of saliva.
Plants and people alike face critical choices as they reproduce: to make a few big, well-provisioned seeds—or babies--or many small, poorly-provisioned ones. Different species make strikingly different choices, resulting in a great diversity of life forms: Darwin's "endless forms most beautiful.
Helene Muller-Landau, staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute argues that these diverse strategies coexist because different levels of stress favor different choices.
LA JOLLA, Calif., February 12, 2010 – An international team of investigators at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham, formerly Burnham Institute for Medical Research), Nijmegen Centre for Molecular Life Sciences and other organizations have discovered that TKS4, a protein implicated in cancer metastasis, also plays a significant role in Frank-Ter Haar syndrome (FTHS), a rare fatal disorder. The research was published on February 12 in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
Bethesda, MD (Feb. 16, 2010) — Certain patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), both ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease of the colon, have an increased risk of developing colorectal cancer compared to individuals without IBD. A number of factors contribute to the increase in risk, which necessitates an individualized and sensible approach to surveillance in patients, according to a new medical position statement and technical review published by the American Gastroenterological Association in its official journal, Gastroenterology.
One of the difficulties of fighting cancer is that drugs often hit other non-cancerous cells, causing patients to get sick. But what if researchers could sneak cancer-fighting particles into just the cancer cells? Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Ovarian Cancer Institute are working on doing just that. In the online journal BMC Cancer they detail a method that uses hydrogels - less than 100 nanometers in size - to sneak a particular type of small interfering RNA(siRNA) into cancer cells.