In a major study funded by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), women with either inactive or stable systemic lupus erythematosus (lupus) — a disease in which the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks and damages healthy tissues of the skin, joints and internal organs — were able to take oral contraceptives without increased risk of flares, or periods of increased disease activity, that characterize th

Psychologists at the University of Liverpool have found that people still find it difficult to understand how mirrors work.

Dr Marco Bertamini, from the University’s School of Psychology, conducted a number of experiments by covering a mirror on a wall and inviting participants to walk along a line parallel to the mirror.

He asked them to guess the point at which they would be able to see their reflection. Results showed that people believe they can see themselves even b

A study at Karolinska Institutet of 133 violent offenders in Sweden shows that 78 (58%) had consumed alcohol within 24 hours before the violent act. A large majority of the offenders were men with psychiatric diagnoses and most of the victims were known to them.

A 13.2-fold increase of risk of violence was found within 24 hours of alcohol consumption. The relative risk of violence was based on comparison to each individual’s usual frequency of alcohol use during the previous year

A new study published in the latest issue of the Journal of Research on Adolescence examines coping styles from youth to young adulthood. The authors find that individuals who had coherent relationships with their parents, dealt with their problems more actively by seeking support and reflecting on possible solutions. They also became increasingly more competent in dealing with a variety of stressors. Those considered insecure, or poorly attached to their parents showing only minor growth in their

A recent study in The American Journal of Gastroenterology revealed that patterns in diet may effect the development of colorectal adenomas, or precancerous polyps of the colon.

In this study, over 1500 patients underwent baseline colonoscopy to remove existing polyps. They were then given a survey about their diet. After a period of one and then four years later, the group underwent follow-up colonoscopies to determine if any polyps had returned. Those who had consumed diets higher in p

A groundbreaking new study examines the origins of holiday giving and finds that our early human ancestors were frequently altruistic.

“Reciprocity is arguably the foundational basis of cooperation in humans,” writes Michael Gurven (University of California – Santa Barbara). “A core feature of reciprocity is the contingent relationship between acts of giving and receiving among social partners. Contingency is important because it sets the rules for who qualifies as a free-rider

Study a breakthrough in efforts to find safe, effective method of producing large quantities of vaccine for top bioterrorism threat

Enough anthrax vaccine to inoculate everyone in the United States could be grown inexpensively and safely with only one acre of tobacco plants, a University of Central Florida molecular biologist has found.

Mice immunized with a vaccine produced in UCF professor Henry Daniell’s laboratory through the genetic engineering of tobacco plan

If you are a Medicare beneficiary, should it matter whether your health care plan is for-profit or not-for-profit? According to a study published in the December issue of The American Journal of Medicine, it may.

By analyzing the first mandatory reporting of Quality-of-Care (QOC) data for Medicare patients, researchers from the Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health; and the Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School, Boston,

Swedish study points to link between depression and coronary heart disease

According to a large-scale study in Sweden, people who have been diagnosed with depression, especially younger patients between 25 and 50 years of age, are at increased risk of developing Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) later in life. Even after accounting for socioeconomic status and gender, the risk was greatest for those diagnosed before 40.

In an article published in the December issue of the Am

New research reveals that television commercials featuring celebrity voice-overs are most influential when consumers can’t identify which actor it belongs to.

The study, by Mark Forehand of the University of Washington Business School and Andrew Perkins of Rice University, appears in the December issue of the Journal of Consumer Research.

The researchers studied consumers’ reactions to TV commercials featuring actors Willem Dafoe, David Duchovny, David Hyde Pie

How and why do young people become criminals? Why do they become criminals? What can we do to change their lives? These are the vital, socially relevant questions that two major research programmes funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) aim to address. Through supporting such work, the ESRC underlines its commitment to social science and to informing policy frameworks.

Pathways into and out of Crime: Risk, Resilience and Diversity, is a network of six universities

Monumental measurement of mortality

The world’s largest prospective study on mortality, in which a staff of a thousand are monitoring 14 million people in 2.4 million representative households, is currently underway in India. As described in the open access journal PLoS Medicine, the study will ascertain the causes of one million deaths expected to occur among these people in the period between 1998 and 2014. Three quarters of the 9.5 million annual deaths in India occur in the ho

Scientists have identified 570 genes that act abnormally during the development of Parkinson’s Disease, a finding which could help doctors predict the likelihood of it developing, and provide targets for new treatments.

The research published in Neurogenetics, by the team from Imperial College London and the University of Liege, Belgium, uses microarrays to analyse brains from Parkinson’s patients. Microarrays are laboratory chips able to pick out which genes are active when diffe

Improved materials may allow stents, tiny metal scaffolds inserted into blood vessels, to better deliver beneficial genes to patients with heart disease, by reducing the risk of inflammation that often negates initial benefits. The new technique, using a compound that binds in an extremely thin layer to bare metal surfaces, may have potential uses in other areas of medicine that make use of metallic implants.

Cardiologists frequently treat heart disease patients now by using stents to ex

’Pre-surgical’ team approach gets patients ready to leave same day

Orthopedic surgeons at Rush University Medical Center found that 96 percent of patients who had minimally invasive total knee replacement surgery were able to go home the same day, without complications-many walking out unassisted or with a cane. These results were published in the October issue of the Journal of Arthroplasty.

Lead author surgeon Richard A. Berger says it’s not just the

Knowing how a mathematical theory developed improves a pupil’s understanding of it. This is the conclusion of Dutch researcher Iris van Gulik, who investigated how the history of mathematics can help pupils to learn this subject.

Van Gulik developed two teaching methods in which a mathematical theory was taught based on the history of its development. Firstly for 13 to 15-year-old high school pupils, geometry was introduced by studying 17th-century Dutch surveying in small