Culture

In one of the more dramatic moments of an underwater archaeological survey co-led by Mercyhurst College archaeologist James Adovasio along Florida's Gulf Coast this summer, Andy Hemmings stood on an inundated river's edge where man hasn't set foot in more than 13,000 years.

Donning full scuba gear, Hemmings stood in 130 feet of water on a peninsula at the intersection of two ancient rivers nearly 100 miles offshore from Tampa. The last time humans could have stood in that spot, mammoth and mastodon roamed the terrain.

New research from UCSF examining HIV among men who have sex with men (MSM) in the township of Soweto in South Africa has found that a third of gay-identified men are infected with HIV.

The study's authors were the first to examine HIV and the community of men who have sex with men in the Soweto Township, an area on the periphery of Johannesburg reserved for black South Africans during apartheid.

It's been 40 years since man first landed on the Moon and almost 37 since Apollo 17, when people last stood on its dusty plains. Over the course of six landings from 1969 to 1972, twelve men explored, dune-buggy'ed, dug and hiked across the surface of Luna. Accounced by president George Bush a few years ago, NASA has plans for a seventh landing on the Moon, albeit taking a lot longer to get there the seventh time than it took the first.

But this time, they intend to stay.

Abstaining from alcohol consumption is associated with an increased risk of depression according to a new study published in Addiction journal.

It has long been recognised that excessive alcohol consumption can lead to poor physical and mental health. However, there has been mounting evidence that low levels of alcohol consumption may also be associated with poor mental health possibly due to abstainers having other health problems or being reformed heavy drinkers.

If the new pandemic flu virus creates a surge of patients during the upcoming flu season, it will be critical to protect health care workers given their important role in treating sick people and lessening the pandemic's overall impact. Respiratory Protection for Healthcare Workers in the Workplace Against Novel H1N1 Influenza A, a new report from the Institute of Medicine, recommends the best means to guard health care workers against infection via respiratory transmission. Embargoed copies of the report will be available to reporters only starting at 9 a.m. EDT Wednesday, Sept. 2.

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Aug. 28, 2009 – A method to detect contaminants in municipal water supplies has undergone further refinements by two Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers whose findings are published on line in Water Environment Research.

Pro-labor policies pushed by President Herbert Hoover after the stock market crash of 1929 accounted for close to two-thirds of the drop in the nation's gross domestic product over the two years that followed, causing what might otherwise have been a bad recession to slip into the Great Depression, a UCLA economist concludes in a new study.

"These findings suggest that the recession was three times worse — at a minimum — than it would otherwise have been, because of Hoover," said Lee E. Ohanian, a UCLA professor of economics.

A new 2,000-year-long reconstruction of sea surface temperatures (SST) from the Indo-Pacific warm pool (IPWP) suggests that temperatures in the region may have been as warm during the Medieval Warm Period as they are today.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – According to the "hardwired for news" theory, people devote more attention to information that is deviant or threatening. To test the theory, University of Missouri researchers examined the physiological effects of reading threatening health news online. The researchers found that news about local health threats increased attention and memory in readers more than news about distant, or non-local, health threats.

A new policy paper by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy shows a clear increase in the size and influence of noncommercial traders, or "speculators," in the oil futures market since regulations were eased by the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000. Speculators now constitute about 50 percent of those holding outstanding positions in the U.S. oil futures market, compared with only about 20 percent prior to 2002. The report also finds that the correlation between oil and the dollar has strengthened significantly over the past several years.

New analysis shows that the water scarcity being experienced in southeast Australia started up to 15 years ago.

While the results from the work by senior CSIRO researcher, Dr Albert van Dijk, may not surprise many people, it provides scientific evidence of the shift.

The finding follows the first ever national and comprehensive analysis of 30 years of on-ground and satellite observations of Australia's water resources.

Skylarks can hear the difference between friendly neighbours and dangerous strangers, and deal with any threatening intruders, says new research by scientists at Queen Mary, University of London.

Male skylarks learn to recognise local dialects in their neighbours' individual songs, remember where each neighbour is supposed to be and reprimand intruders who don't belong in the neighbourhood, according to a study carried out by Dr Elodie Briefer, a postdoctoral researcher at Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences.

A study of 4254 Canadian schoolchildren has shown a direct association between BMI and satisfaction with their body shape. The research, published in the open access journal BMC Public Health, shows a linear response for girls, who were happiest when thinnest, and a U-shaped response for boys, who were unhappy when they were too skinny or too fat.

In a new study of nearly one million adults between the ages of 18 and 64, almost 70 percent of participants underwent at least one medical imaging procedure between July 2005 and December 2007, resulting in an average effective dose of radiation nearly double the amount they would otherwise be exposed to from natural sources. Around 20 percent of participants received at least moderate annual doses of radiation from diagnostic tests, and women and older individuals were at greater risk for radiation exposure, according to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine.

DURHAM, N.C. – When enrolling patients in a clinical trial, researchers should disclose relevant financial relationships that might affect a patient's decision about participation, such as owning stock in the company that funds the study, or having a patent on the device being tested.

It's a process many believe builds trust and fulfills a patient's right to know about financial conflicts of interest.