Culture

A common pasture plant could help foraging ruminants ward off damaging gastrointestinal nematodes that can cause illness and death, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists report.

Animal scientist Joan Burke at the ARS Dale Bumpers Small Farms Research Center in Booneville, Ark., along with colleagues at several universities, has patented formulations of Sericea lespedeza, commonly referred to as Chinese bush clover. The plant was introduced in the United States in the 1930s to minimize soil erosion.

Compared to current approaches that emphasize diagnosing symptoms and mental health issues, the strengths-based approach helps identify survivors' abilities, such as perseverance and overcoming, and how those skills can be used in their present-day lives.

"What are normally regarded as negative traits in survivors of family violence might actually be their survival strengths," Anderson said. "Traits that practitioners often try to change may be extremely important to maintain and can help survivors thrive in environments where there isn't violence."

Companies that use the popular social-media site Facebook and its fan page module to market themselves to customers can increase sales, word-of-mouth marketing and customer loyalty significantly among a subset of their customers, according to new research from Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business. The study is featured in the March issue of the Harvard Business Review.

NEOS, the Network-Enabled Optimization System developed by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory in conjunction with Northwestern University, has reached a new milestone: two million submissions to its optimization software.

NEOS has been used extensively for a variety of applications, including modeling electricity markets, predicting global protein folding and training artificial neural networks.

Ridgefield, CT, February 18, 2010 – New findings from a European study show that women with low sexual desire and associated distress experience personal and emotional distress related to the sexual issue. The findings, presented today at the International Society for the Study of Women's Sexual Health (ISSWSH) 2010 Annual Meeting in St. Petersburg, Fla., are based on a survey of 5,098 women with low sexual desire and associated distress.

The rate of stillbirths in rural areas of six developing countries fell more than 30 percent following a basic training program in newborn care for birth attendants, according to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The study tracked more than 120,000 births.

The study tested the efficacy of a three-day Essential Newborn Care training regimen that covers basic newborn care techniques, the importance of early breastfeeding, how to keep infants warm and dry, and signs of serious health problems.

ST. PAUL, Minn. – New research shows people who regularly take ibuprofen may reduce their risk of developing Parkinson's disease, according to a study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 62nd Annual Meeting in Toronto April 10 to April 17, 2010.

PITTSBURGH—A study led by University of Pittsburgh researchers could finally lay to rest the millennia-old conjecture that the ancient empire of Carthage regularly sacrificed its youngest citizens. An examination of the remains of Carthaginian children revealed that most infants perished prenatally or very shortly after birth and were unlikely to have lived long enough to be sacrificed, according to a Feb. 17 report in PLoS ONE.

Approximately 66 percent of respondents to a Maryland telephone survey do not have advance medical directives, according to a new report by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Department of Health Policy and Management. Younger adults and blacks were less likely than older adults and whites, respectively, to report having an advance directive, which includes the living will and health care power of attorney.

Most people know the rules of healthy eating, but most of us might eat a little healthier if we were reminded. Now a researcher at Georgia Tech is testing using a mobile phone to help community members steer themselves away from that chocolate cake and toward the fruits and veggies. The research was presented at the Conference on Computer Supported Work held in Savannah, GA last week.

Vigorous two-party competition provides the best guarantee for meaningful, broad-based governance and modest salaries for lawmakers add a second protection against narrow-interest legislation, finds a national study spanning 120 years of state lawmaking published online this week.

Although government critics often call for transparency, executive vetoes, and professional pay to curb pork barrel legislation and other bills that benefit only one lawmaker's constituents, the study finds that sharp competition and lower salaries, in fact, are better remedies.

Small migratory birds, like the garden warbler, must make stopovers on their journeys to their breeding grounds. When they have crossed extensive ecological barriers, such as deserts or oceans, they must land to replenish their fat reserves. A researcher from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen and a team of Italian colleagues measured the duration of the stopovers made by garden warblers on an island off the Italian coast.

Cambridge, MA—February 17, 2010—President Barack Obama has pledged to support urban America through policy initiatives, and has created a White House Office of Urban Affairs which reports directly to the President. He plans to implement the Promise Neighborhoods Initiative, which will be patterned after the Harlem Children's Zone, HCZ. In recent years, a lack of federal resources (mass transit, social service, public works, education, job training) designed to help disadvantaged individuals gain financial security have aggravated problems in inner-city neighborhoods.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Several Midwestern states could be facing increased winter and spring flooding, as well as difficult growing conditions on farms, if average temperatures rise, according to a Purdue University researcher.

Keith Cherkauer, an assistant professor of agricultural and biological engineering, ran simulation models that show Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan could see as much as 28 percent more precipitation by the year 2070, with much of that coming in the winter and spring. His projections also show drier summer and fall seasons.

Vigorous two-party competition provides the best guarantee for meaningful, broad-based governance and modest salaries for lawmakers add a second protection against narrow-interest legislation, finds a national study spanning 120 years of state lawmaking published online this week.

Although government critics often call for transparency, executive vetoes, and professional pay to curb pork barrel legislation and other bills that benefit only one lawmaker's constituents, the study finds that sharp competition and lower salaries, in fact, are better remedies.