Culture

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Middle-aged parents are more involved in their grown children's lives than ever, according to new research from Purdue University.

"We found that middle-aged parents help each of their grown children with many types of support at least every few weeks," said Karen Fingerman, the Berner-Hanley Professor in Gerontology, Developmental and Family Studies. "This is a dramatic increase from 20 years ago, when young adults received much less support from their parents."

Religion is not just for churches, synagogues or mosques anymore -- it's a topic that is being actively searched for online, according to researchers at Penn State.

The researchers examined how people use search engines to locate religious information online. They analyzed more than 5.5 million searches collected from three Web search engines between 1997 and 2005 to investigate attributes of religious searching on the Web.

Children in military families may suffer from more emotional and behavioral difficulties when compared to other American youths, with older children and girls struggling the most when a parent is deployed overseas, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

Researchers found that having a parent deployed for a longer period of time and having a non-deployed parent who has struggled with emotional problems were important factors associated with whether military children would struggle themselves, according to the study published online by the journal Pediatrics.

Washington, December 4, 2009 – The American College of Physicians (ACP) today sent a letter to Senate leaders sharing the College's views on key issues in H.R. 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

After being exhibited in New York, the priceless oil paintings move on to a gallery in Paris and then to a museum in Berlin. To protect the works of art from the effects of the environment during transport and storage, they are packed in special cases made of plastic, wood and glass. The microclimate inside these cases keeps the polluted outside atmosphere at bay. But the works of art are still exposed to a certain amount of risk, because the wood, plastics and adhesives used to make the transport containers can also emit damaging substances such as acetic acid.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – According to an analysis of statewide data taken from 1998-2001, women in Oregon who made less than $50,000 a year were more than three times likely to report they were discriminated against by health providers because of their insurance status during pregnancy and delivery.

In addition, reporting of insurance-based discrimination was also three times more likely among mothers with Medicaid coverage, and four times more likely among women who did not have Medicaid or employer-sponsored health insurance.

Birds' alarm calls serve both to alert other birds to danger and to warn off predators. And some birds can pull a ventriloquist's trick, singing from the side of their mouths, according to a UC Davis study.

Many animals respond vocally when they detect predators, but it's not clear to whom they are signaling,

Dark-eyed Juncos, Yellow-rumped warblers and house finches can direct their alarm calls in the direction of an apparent threat.

(Photo Credit: Susie Nishio)

The relatively low number of new cases created by a single case of H1N1 influenza indicates that mitigation strategies such as vaccination, social distancing and the use of antiviral drugs may help to lessen the final impact of the virus, suggests an epidemiological modelling study http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/doi/10.1503/cmaj.091807 reported in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) www.cmaj.ca.

We've all been in situations before where we get so frustrated or angry about something, we will lash out at someone without thinking. This lashing out — reactive negativity — happens when we can't control our emotions. Luckily, we are usually pretty good at self-regulating and controlling our emotions and behaviors. Working memory is crucial for cognitive control of emotions: It allows us to consider information we have and reason quickly when deciding what to do as opposed to reacting automatically, without thinking, to something.

The larger the number of examinees, the lower the average grade. This is one of the findings of a series of new studies carried out by scientists at the University of Haifa and the University of Michigan. "It is a well-established fact that subjective factors influence our motivation to compete. Our recent studies have shown that objective factors, such as the size of a competing group, also have an effect on motivation," explains Dr. Avishalom Tor from the University of Haifa's Faculty of Law.

Forest dwellers must be included in the design of the upcoming forest deal at Copenhagen in order to avoid a humanitarian crisis, according to a scientist at the University of Leeds.

Writing today in Nature, Dr Simon Lewis argues that at least 50% of the carbon credit payments to be agreed at Copenhagen, known as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degredation), should be made to forest dwellers directly, and their property rights assured.

PHILADELPHIA – New research published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, supports the World Health Initiative's efforts for a home smoking ban, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University.

Specifically, hair nicotine concentrations were higher in children exposed to secondhand smoke at home, and the younger the children, the higher the concentration under the same level of secondhand smoke exposure at home.

PHILADELPHIA – In the Appalachian region of the country — where smoking rates are high, tobacco is often a cash crop and income and education levels are low — a smoking cessation effort led by non-medical professionals was successful in the short term, but quit rates trailed off in the long term.

PHILADELPHIA — Mexican-American teens who were considered more susceptible to smoking were 2.6 times more likely to experiment with cigarettes than their peers who expressed commitment to never smoke, according to a report published in the tobacco focus issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.