Culture

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Against the backdrop of last week's Congressional hearing into the future of forensic science, researchers from the University at Buffalo's Laboratory for Forensic Odontology Research in the School of Dental Medicine, have published a landmark paper on the controversial topic of bitemark analysis.

Younger people with pain look similar in terms of their disability to people who are two to three decades older without pain, according to a study published in this month's issue of the Journal of the American Geriatric Society. The results of the study uncovered that people with pain develop the functional limitations classically associated with aging at much earlier ages.

Scientists in Pennsylvania report that boosting production of crops used to make biofuels could make a difficult task to shrink a vast, oxygen-depleted "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico more difficult. The zone, which reached the size of Massachusetts in 2008, forms in summer and threatens marine life and jobs in the region. Their study is scheduled for the Oct. 1 issue of ACS' semi-monthly journal Environmental Science & Technology.

CHAPEL HILL – A new study shows that parents are more likely to understand a body mass index (BMI) chart if it's color-coded, like a traffic light, than the standard charts currently in use.

"We think that better communication of BMI from doctor to parent could lead to parents earlier awareness of their child's weight status in time to help them make important lifestyle changes," says Eliana Perrin, M.D., M.P.H., senior and corresponding author of the study and assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.

Two new expert commentaries released in the September 16 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience spotlight the increasingly violent animal rights attacks and the need for an educated public and engaged research community to ensure the safety of animals and researchers, as well as the continuation of health advances. The commentaries, written by Jeffery H. Kordower, and by Dario L. Ringach and J. David Jentsch, outline the strong efforts by The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) and the research community to ensure humane and responsible animal research.

Black patients have lower rates of successful resuscitation and are less likely to survive an in-hospital cardiac arrest compared to white patients, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

In the study, black patients had a 12 percent lower overall rate of surviving the cardiac emergency in which the heart stops beating. Much of the racial difference was associated with the poor-performing hospitals where black patients received their care.

A team led by Denis Reale, a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at UQAM and Canada Research Chair in Behavioral Ecology, recently completed a study showing the link between personality, survival and reproductive success in male bighorn sheep. Their results were published in an article entitled "Male personality, life-history strategies and reproductive success in a promiscuous mammal" in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology . The research offers insight into personality differences in animals and humans, from an evolutionary perspective.