Culture

Just in time for Valentine's Day, Bytesize Science released a new video today featuring five chemistry facts that highlight why chocolate, in moderation, may be good for you. The video is available at www.BytesizeScience.com

The video explains how a bar of chocolate contains hundreds of compounds, many with beneficial properties. Among the video's "sweet" facts:

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Like turning coal to diamond, adding pressure to an electrical material enhances its properties. Now, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researchers have devised a method of making ferroelectric thin films with twice the strain, resulting in exceptional performance.

Led by Lane Martin, a professor of materials science and engineering, the group published its results in the journal Advanced Materials.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Newly published results from a randomized controlled clinical trial in the Pacific U.S. territory of American Samoa add clear evidence for the emerging idea that community health workers can meaningfully improve type 2 diabetes care in medically underserved communities.

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Children who are bullied online or by mobile phone are just as likely to skip school or consider suicide as kids who are physically bullied, according to a study led by a Michigan State University criminologist.

The findings, published in the International Criminal Justice Review, suggest parents, school officials and policymakers should consider bullying experiences both on and offline when creating anti-bullying policies and procedures.

Using a selective screening strategy for prostate cancer may reduce the harms associated with testing while preserving the number of lives saved.

Measuring blood levels of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) can help doctors determine which patients may be at risk for prostate cancer. Patients with an elevated PSA level may require a biopsy to determine if cancer is present. However, biopsies are associated with many troublesome side effects and still cannot tell a doctor with certainty which cases of prostate cancer are life-threatening and require treatment.

We all know certain time-honored clichés: "It was love at first sight," "It's inner beauty that truly matters," "Opposites attract" and that some time before February 14th each year sociologists will produce a bunch of 'studies' on kissing and romance and why people like people - and it will be just surveys, mostly of college students.

Orlando, Fla., February 8, 2013 – Monitoring the hepatic function of unresectable liver cancer patients, measured by 99mTc-labeled iminodiacetic acid (HIDA) via single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) prior to and during radiation therapy, provides vital information that could guide more customized treatment plans and reduce risks of liver injury, according to research being presented at the 2013 Cancer Imaging and Radiation Therapy Symposium. This Symposium is sponsored by the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) and the Radiological Society of North American (RSNA).

How physicians view the causes of obesity may impact the advice they give their patients. The findings are from a new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who compared the relationship between primary care physicians' beliefs about the causes of obesity with the frequency of nutritional counseling. They found that physicians who believed over consumption of food to be a major contributor to obesity were significantly more likely to counsel their patients to modify nutritional habits.

Bronchiectasis is independently associated with an increased mortality risk in patients with moderate-to-severe COPD, according to a new study from researchers in Spain.

Bronchiectasis, a permanent and progressive dilation of the lung's airways, is common in COPD patients and is associated with longer and more intense exacerbations, more frequent bacterial colonization of the bronchial mucosa, and a greater degree of functional impairment.

Fishing communities living on the islands of Indonesia's Karimunjawa National Park have found an important balance, improving their social well-being while reducing their reliance on marine biodiversity, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society and the University of Western Australia.

Chicago (February 7, 2013): Colorectal surgical patients are often discharged from the hospital with vague guidance on how to recognize complications, but researchers at the Michael DeBakey Veterans Administration (VA) Medical Center and Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, aim to change that scenario. A health services research team convened a panel of surgical experts to develop a list of postoperative complication signs that should prompt colorectal surgical patients to call their surgeons or go to an emergency room.

Nearly one in 12 American stroke survivors may have contemplated suicide or wished themselves dead, according to a study presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2013.

The proportion of stroke survivors who contemplated suicide was striking, compared with patients with other health conditions, said Amytis Towfighi, M.D., lead author of the study and an assistant professor of Clinical Neurology at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and chair of the Department of Neurology at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center.

More than a third of patients who suffer a major bleeding in the brain and have their life support withdrawn might have eventually regained an acceptable level of functioning if life support had been sustained, suggests a new study presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2013.