Work could lead to improved machine vision systems, more

MIT scientists are reporting new insights into how the human brain recognizes objects, especially faces, in work that could lead to improved machine vision systems, diagnostics for certain neurological conditions and more.

Look at a photo of people running a marathon. The lead runners’ faces are quite distinct, but we can also make out the faces of those farther in the distance. Zoom in on that distant runner, how

In a study of Han Chinese patients, researchers have for the first time directly linked a gene of the immune system to a severe adverse drug reaction called Stevens-Johnson syndrome (SJS), according to a Duke University Medical Center medical geneticist and collaborators in Taiwan.

The sometimes fatal condition is characterized by a blistering rash that can lead to detachment of the skin and inflammation of the gastrointestinal and respiratory lining. More than 100 drugs — including antibi

Innovation for People-this is what the project “Design for Well-Being” at Luleå University of Technology is all about. If people’s needs can be captured and carefully considered, then technology can help us feel better. This is the basic approach that is guiding eleven of the students in this year’s version of the course titled SIRIUS-Creative Product Development. Together with students from Stanford University and the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, they are developing a wheelchair

The world’s dialects are multiplying faster than ever before – quashing fears that globalisation is leading to a standardising of language.

Immigrants to places like Europe, the US and Australia are creating completely new dialects when they learn the language of their host country by mixing it with aspects of their native tongue, experts will discuss at a major international conference at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne today (April 1 2004).

Previous research has

The use of photographs by psychotherapists as memory cues for the “recovery” of patients’ possible childhood sexual abuse has been called into question by a Canadian study. It found that a “staggering” two-out-of-three participants accepted a concocted false grade-school event as having really happened to them when suggestions regarding the event were supplemented with a class photo.

“I was flabbergasted to have attained such an exceptionally high rate of quite elaborate false memory r

Dr. Doug Aoki believes love truly is as perennial as the grass, and we don’t really have a choice in the matter.

“Love will grab a hold of you one way or the other, whether it’s romantic love, brotherly love, self love, love for a pet, whatever. Good or bad, we can’t get out of it,” says Aoki, a professor of sociology at the University of Alberta.

Aoki has just published the third in a series of articles called True Love Stories in the journal Cultural Studie

Educational experts have challenged the Government to provide specialist teachers in Citizenship in order to stem the growing tide of Islamophobia post 9/11.

University of Leicester staff and students have highlighted the need for changes in the curriculum in order to promote an inclusive national identity. Their views are expressed in the latest edition of the journal ’Race Equality Teaching’.

Professor Audrey Osler, Director of the Centre for Citizenship Studies in Education at t

Suggests people choose canines who resemble themselves

Long the subject of speculation, a new study says that dogs DO resemble their owners. At least this is the case with purebred canines, according to new research conducted at the University of California, San Diego, by social psychologist Nicholas Christenfeld and his UCSD colleague, Michael Roy. The full study, Do Dogs Resemble Their Owners?, appears in the May issue of Psychological Science, the journal of the American Psycholog

The results and use of the model may have implications for cancer therapy

Zebrafish may prove to be an invaluable animal model with which to screen the effects of radiation, Jefferson Medical College researchers have found.

Adam Dicker, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of radiation oncology at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson’s Kimmel Cancer Center in Philadelphia, Mary Frances McAleer, M.D., Ph.D., a resident in the Department of Radia

Study also confirms that psoriasis is widespread across US

A study released Saturday in a special issue of the Journal of Investigative Dermatology (JID) finds that many adults with relatively small areas of psoriasis on their skin nevertheless report high levels of dissatisfaction with their current treatment, and also feel that psoriasis is a problem in their daily life. In all, an estimated 1.75 million adults in the United States say their psoriasis is a problem for them in everyd

Little attention has been paid to the wishes and needs of female patients regarding fetal abnormalities

Women whose ultrasounds show fetal abnormalities want clear information about results as quickly and as empathetically as possible, says a new study by researchers at U of T, Mount Sinai Hospital and York University.

“Unfortunately, we still see examples of bad news being given quite badly,” says Dr. Rory Windrim, a U of T professor in the Faculty of Medicine and an obstet

Scientists have taken a significant leap forward in understanding the complex ways that molecules work together in cells. The work of the Structural & Computational Programme at EMBL-Heidelberg, in collaboration with Cellzome AG, appears in the current issue of the journal Science (March 26, 2004).

Although scientists already know a lot about single molecules, they know very little about how they are assembled into larger molecular complexes or “machines” and how these machines work together

It is relatively common to hear an object described as being “bigger than a breadbox,” and most people have little trouble making this type of comparative judgment. However, how the human brain makes such comparisons based on continuous quantities is quite complex and not completely understood. Now, a new research study published in the March 25 issue of Neuron provides significant new information about how the brain interprets spatial and nonspatial sensory information to make comparative judgments

The Cambridge-MIT Institute (CMI) is today launching a new initiative to unite biologists and medical researchers with physicists, engineers, computer scientists and mathematicians to work on an innovative approach to discovering the next generation of drugs.

CMI is funding a transatlantic Next-Generation Drug Discovery Community that will bring together researchers at Cambridge University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with partners from the IT, pharmaceutical and biot

Authors call on physicians and parents to engage players in discussions about media violence and its implications

A new study finds that Teen-rated video games contain significant amounts of violence and death. Led by researchers at the Center on Media and Child Health at Children’s Hospital Boston and the Kids Risk Project at the Harvard School of Public Health, the study appears March 12 in Medscape General Medicine (www.medgenmed.com), the first and only online, peer-reviewed pri

A lactation program targeting mothers of very low birth weight babies (VLBWB) can be successful in raising the rate of breast-feeding among this group

Mother’s milk is well documented to be the optimal source of nutrition for newborn babies; however, mothers of very low birth weight (VLBW) babies (those who weigh less than 1500 grams — approximately 3.3 pounds) are among the least likely groups to initiate and sustain lactation.

Now, a study published in the Journal of