A Monash University-led nationwide study into the health beliefs and behaviours of obese people has found that the more severely obese a person is, the less likely they feel they can reduce their weight.
The research, funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Grant Scheme, is the first of its kind in Australia. 141 obese Australians were extensively interviewed to try to gauge how they perceived their weight and ability to manage it.
A new study of young children in orphanages in Bucharest, Romania, has found that children placed in foster care before age 2 were more apt to develop secure attachments to their foster parents than those who entered foster care after age 2.
A new study of children in Ukraine has found that for the growing number of HIV-infected children, the quality of care and the relationship between children and their caregivers play an important role in their development. Based on their findings, the researchers highlight the importance of comprehensive but focused intervention efforts to improve these relationships by changing caregivers' working schedules and providing training to enhance the stability and sensitivity of care.
Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. Despite evidence and guidelines supporting the value of screening for this disease, rates of screening for colorectal cancer are consistently lower than those for other types of cancer, particularly breast and cervical. Although the screening rates in the target population of adults over age 50, have increased from 20-30 percent in 1997 to nearly 55 percent in 2008 — the rates are still too low.
Using lasers and nanoparticles, scientists at Rice University have discovered a new technique for singling out individual diseased cells and destroying them with tiny explosions. The scientists used lasers to make "nanobubbles" by zapping gold nanoparticles inside cells. In tests on cancer cells, they found they could tune the lasers to create either small, bright bubbles that were visible but harmless or large bubbles that burst the cells.
The GOES spacecraft continues its processing at the Astrotech Facility in Titusville, Fla. and fuel was loaded into the GOES-P spacecraft on Saturday, January 30. The fuel will keep GOES-P in orbit for about 14 years.
Just as you wouldn't want your car's gas tank to leak, engineers don't want a satellite to leak fuel. So, a team of engineers performed propulsion system pressurization and leak checks before fueling GOES-P. Those preparations were completed on January 22.
OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Feb. 4, 2010 -- An advancement in hybrid electric vehicle technology is providing powerful benefits beyond transportation.
Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have designed, fabricated and demonstrated a PHEV traction drive power electronics system that provides significant mobile power generation and vehicle-to-grid support capabilities.
A study published today in Science, by researchers at Rothamsted Research (an institute of the BBSRC), the Met Office, the Natural Resources Institute, and the Universities of Exeter, Greenwich and York, sheds new light on the flight behaviours that enable insects to undertake long-distance migrations, and highlights the remarkable abilities of these insect migrants.
"Early tests provided some of the fibrous texture to the final product, but it tasted more like turkey," Hsieh said. "In order to produce a more realistic product, we had to tweak the process and add extra fiber to give the soy a stringy feeling that tears into irregular, coarse fibers similar to chicken."
To create the soy chicken, Hsieh starts with a soy protein extracted from soy flour. The soy then goes through an extrusion cooking process that uses water, heat and pressure while pushing the mixture through a cylinder with two augers.
MIT researchers have demonstrated the first laser built from germanium that can emit wavelengths of light useful for optical communications. It's also the first germanium laser to operate at room temperature. Unlike the materials typically used in lasers, germanium is easy to incorporate into existing processes for manufacturing silicon chips. So the result could prove an important step toward computers that move data — and maybe even perform calculations — using light instead of electricity.
An ultra-lightweight sponge made of clay and a bit of high-grade plastic draws oil out of contaminated water but leaves the water behind.
And, lab tests show that oil absorbed can be squeezed back out for use.
Case Western Reserve University researchers who made the material, called an aerogel, believe it will effectively clean up spills of all kinds of oils and solvents on factory floors and roadways, rivers and oceans.
*"The Mediterranean Sea has a stable and constant dolphin population off the coast of Israel. Any resolution concerning the sea must also consider the dolphins," says Dr. Aviad Scheinin of the University of Haifa, who carried out the study.*
Extensive commercial fishing endangers dolphin populations in the Mediterranean. This has been shown in a new study carried out at the University of Haifa's Department of Maritime Civilizations. "Unfortunately, we turn our backs to the sea and do not give much consideration to our marine neighbors," states researcher Dr. Aviad Scheinin.
Now that Fami has crossed Madagascar, its fading fast. NASA's Aqua satellite captured an infrared satellite image earlier today that showed the storm was elongating and losing its circulation.
NASA's Aqua satellite AIRS instrument captured Fami on Feb. 3 at 09:35 UTC (4:35 a.m. ET), and showed the system more resembling a cold front than a tropical cyclone, as it appears stretched out from northwest to southeast. There are also very few strong thunderstorms left in what was once the center.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Providing preventive Tamiflu and educating and emphasizing the need for repeated hand sanitizer use and disinfectant spray helped stop the spread of H1N1 influenza at a boys' summer camp in northern Alabama, according the co-director of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases.
Making flu shots mandatory in 2008 dramatically increased the vaccination rate among St. Louis-based BJC HealthCare's nearly 26,000 employees to more than 98 percent, according to a report now online in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
The study's lead author, infectious disease specialist Hilary Babcock, M.D., says the success of the mandatory program demonstrates it is possible to implement a vaccination campaign on a large scale in a health-care setting.