Speakers Can Avoid Confusion for Listeners, Researchers Find

If someone told you to “put the apple in the basket on the table,” what would you do? Depending on how many apples and baskets are in your kitchen, it might not be clear. Would you move the apple in the basket to the table, or move the apple to the basket on the table? Had the speaker included the word “that’s” after the word “apple,” it would have eliminated any confusion. But people often fail to avoid such ambi

More than fifty percent of the U.S. population tested positive to one or more allergens, according to a large national study. The new findings, based on data from the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III), shows that 54.3% of individuals aged 6-59 years old had a positive skin test response to at least one of the 10 allergens tested. The highest prevalence rates were for dust mite, rye, ragweed, and cockroach, with about 25% of the population testing positive to ea

MDCT arthrography is an accurate method for assessing cartilage loss in patients with hip dysplasia and may be more reliable than MRI in such instances, says a new study by researchers from Osaka University Medical School in Japan.

Hip dysplasia is a malformation or alteration of the ball (femur head) and socket (acetabulum) joint bones of the hip that can wear away the surrounding cartilage, which can lead to arthritis and other problems. “The condition is often caused by a bir

Chemotherapy and organ transplantation not only take a huge toll on patients, but they can compromise the immune system and leave patients vulnerable to infections from microbes such as pathogenic fungi–the fastest-growing cause of hospital-acquired infections. Now researchers from Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research have discovered one possible reason why these fungal microbes are such a scourge.

According to the research appearing in the August 7 online edition of t

A new study finds that the size of newly diagnosed breast cancers has shifted towards smaller tumors, even within conventional cancer stage categories, and that this shift accounts for a proportion of the improvement seen in breast cancer survival over the last 30 years. The authors of the report say that failure to account for this shift in tumor size can lead to overestimation of the impact of treatment advances. The study is published in the September 15, 2005 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed j

Feeling depressed and fatigued does not increase a person’s risk for cancer, according to a new study. Severely exhausted people, however, do engage in behavior that is associated with a higher cancer risk. The study, published in the September 15, 2005 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, is the first prospective study using the “vital exhaustion” questionnaire to investigate this link.

The concept of vital exhaustion – described as feelings o

American Heart Association rapid access journal report:

In a study of women smokers, those whose spouses also smoked had a higher risk of stroke than those married to nonsmokers, according to a study in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.

“There is evidence suggesting that your exposure to secondhand smoke can increase your chances of getting heart disease. We asked if that was also true for stroke,” said the study’s lead author Adnan I. Qureshi M.D.

Breastfeeding toddlers: it’s considered a social no-no, which means very few mothers end up breastfeeding their babies past 12 months of age. A University of Western Sydney researcher has carried out Australia’s first study of mums and bubs who breastfeed beyond infancy – looking at why these women are bucking the trend against premature weaning, and asking the toddlers themselves how they feel about breastfeeding.

Dr Karleen Gribble from the UWS School of Nursing, Famil

This report details the numbers of Nanotechnology and Nanoscience (N&N) infrastructure centres and networks within the EU and associated states. Names of centres and networks with website details and brief descriptions are included along with an introduction to N&N research and development (R&D) in each country. For summary charts, the following broad categories have been used: all technologies; nanomaterials; electronics and systems; fundamental research; nanobiotechnology; analytical and diagno

The first accreditation for a Skin Camouflage course ever to be awarded by a university is soon be awarded by the University of Hertfordshire.

The course which started in April and ended last month attracted skin camouflage practitioners and individuals with skin disfigurements from all over the UK. Most of them were beauticians who wanted to gain formal qualifications in skin camouflage and to update their skills.

The course was developed by the University of Hertfordsh

In territorial species with polygynous mating systems, reproductive success reflects phenotypic variation. At the gross level, such phenotypic variation can include that of body size and weapon morphology, as well as of weapon function and performance. In a study published in the September issue of The American Naturalist, A. Kristopher Lappin (Northern Arizona University) and Jerry F. Husak (Oklahoma State University) use the eastern collared lizard (Crotaphytus collaris ), a sexually dimorp

Containment in a medium-sized Southeast Asian community may be possible, though challenging, if implemented early, researchers say

Though quick to caution about the many things that could go wrong, researchers say that it may be possible to contain a Southeast Asian outbreak of avian influenza in humans, buying precious time for the production of a vaccine.

Using a computer model to simulate an outbreak in a rural Southeast Asian population, the scientists have shown how

Prehistoric big game hunters and not the last ice age are the likely culprits in the extinction of giant ground sloths and other North American great mammals such as mammoths, mastodons and saber-toothed tigers, says a University of Florida researcher.

Determining whether the first arrival of humans or the warm-up of the American continent at the end of the last Ice Age was responsible for the demise of prehistoric sloths has puzzled scientists because both events occurred at the

Recent suicide attempters treated with cognitive therapy were 50 percent less likely to try to kill themselves again within 18 months than those who did not receive the therapy, report researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A targeted form of cognitive therapy designed to prevent suicide proved better at lifting depression and feelings of hopelessness than the usua

Rats fed a high fat diet were less sensitive to a hormonal ’stop eating’ signal than rats on a low fat diet when they were given access to a high calorie, high fat snack that the animals find yummy.

Dr. Mihai Covasa, assistant professor of nutritional sciences and a member of the Penn State Neuroscience Institute, led the study. He says, “When we gave the rats doses of a ’stop eating’ hormone, the rats on the low fat diet significantly suppressed their intake

Multi-institutional study addresses critical GVHD complication

Together with 16 other institutions in the United States, University of Minnesota researchers led the largest study to date in patients with leukemia and related disorders undergoing bone marrow transplantation from unrelated donors. The study was designed to determine whether one of two general approaches to prevent graft-versus-host-disease (GVHD), a potentially lethal complication, might result in improved survival.