We’ve all been there. At the car sales lot, being simultaneously wooed by big-numbered rebates rolling off the tongue of a fast-talking salesperson. The experience is both tantalizing and worrisome. Promotions are so common in the marketplace that they are basically a ubiquitous part of our buying experience. An article in the March 2005 issue of the Journal of Consumer Research taps into this marketplace phenomenon, explaining how consumers react to and are affected by promotions. It seems tha
The Golden Rice Humanitarian Board welcomes the peer reviewed study published in the April issue of Nature Biotechnology detailing the development of a new variety of Golden Rice that contains approximately 23 times more beta-carotene or “pro-vitamin A” than the original Golden Rice variety.The human body converts beta-carotene to Vitamin A.
The Board encourages further research to determine how the new variety may play a part in the ongoing global effort to fight vitamin A d
If you speak only one language, do not feel upset. Simultaneously with your native language or perhaps even earlier, you have learned one more language – a visual one. A person perceives everything around through the eyes. The eyes “speak” their own special language. This language has letters, words and even grammar rules. Psychologists from Moscow State University have come to this conclusion. Their effort has been supported by the Russian Humanitarian Research Foundation.
Human v
Firefighters face a high chance of injury or death whether on the scene of a fire, on the way to a fire or even during training–with an estimated 81,000 injuries and 100 deaths in 2002 alone. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently released a study* that estimates the cost in 2002 of addressing firefighter injuries and of efforts to prevent them to be $2.8 billion to $7.8 billion per year.
The study, conducted by the TriData Division of System Plannin
Join birds, bats and dolphins as vocal learners
Elephants learn to imitate sounds that are not typical of their species, the first known example after humans of vocal learning in a non-primate terrestrial mammal. The discovery, reported in today’s Nature, further supports the idea that vocal learning is important for maintaining individual social relationships among animals that separate and reunite over time, like dolphins and whales, some birds, and bats.
Researchers f
Two new studies present evidence that the virus causing severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) may spread through the air, not just through direct contact with contaminated water droplets as previous research had shown.
SARS coronavirus was detected in the air in a patient’s room during the 2003 outbreak in Toronto, according to a new study published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases. Another study, from Hong Kong, shows patients in hospital bays near a SARS patient had a muc
Women who are HIV-positive or are abused are more likely to think about or attempt suicide, according to a new study by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, George Washington University and St. Michael’s Hospital, in Toronto, Canada. The Hopkins study, consistent with previous research, sheds new light on the extent to which being in an abusive relationship compounds suicide risk for HIV-positive women in particular. This latest study is published in the March/Ap
In a study of 200 women, a group of physicians has found that a vast majority of women would be willing to take a cervical cancer vaccine themselves and would allow it to be administered to their children. The findings, which were presented at the Society of Gynecologic Oncologist’s (SGO) Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer in Miami, describes women’s attitudes toward a potential cervical cancer vaccine, focusing on their willingness to accept it for themselves, and their daughters and sons. It is the
Scientists at the American Museum of Natural History and the University of Chicago have explained how a globe-encircling residue formed in the aftermath of the asteroid impact that triggered the extinction of the dinosaurs. The study, which will be published in the April issue of the journal Geology, draws the most detailed picture yet of the complicated chemistry of the fireball produced in the impact.
The residue consists of sand-sized droplets of hot liquid that condensed from th
New studies show mixed results on the effects of epilepsy drugs taken during pregnancy. With a newer drug, lamotrigine, the risk of birth defects was similar to that in women without epilepsy. But long-time epilepsy drug valproic acid, or sodium valproate, does increase the risk of birth defects. Both studies were published in the March 22 issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Another study in the same issue found that children ages 6
While sports and energy drinks help athletes re-hydrate after a long workout, if consumed on a regular basis they can damage teeth. These beverages may cause irreversible damage to dental enamel, potentially resulting in severe tooth decay according to a study reported in the January/February issue of General Dentistry, the Academy of General Dentistry ’s clinical, peer-reviewed journal. Dental enamel is the thin, outer layer of hard tissue that helps maintain the tooth structure and shape
Genomic analysis may one day be a primary diagnostic tool for physicians deciding on a course of treatment for trauma and other critically ill patients in the intensive care unit (ICU), according to a new study by a national collaboration of more than 70 physicians and scientists.
The researchers showed that state-of-the-art techniques for rapidly analyzing changes in activity of all human genes will likely produce useful insights into the health of critically ill patients. The f
Finding patterns behind seemingly random events is the signature of a recent trio of research studies coming from the statistical physics group in Boston University’s Department of Physics. Although describing physical phenomenon is not a surprising industry for research physicists, findings from this BU group increasingly wed phenomena associated with the inanimate world to those of animate beings — finding commonalities between stock markets fluctuations, earthquakes, and heart rates, for
Poverty alleviation and conservation must go hand-in-hand, survey finds
Even a small increase in the wealth of poor, rural families in Gabon may cause a substantial increase in the consumption of bushmeat, according to a study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in a recent issue of Conservation Biology. The results of the study, the authors said, underline the importance of coordinating poverty alleviation efforts with conservation to avoid depleting natural resources in Cen
The presence of drug-resistant, pathogenic bacteria on uncooked poultry products varies by commercial brand and is likely related to antibiotic use in production, according to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Their study is the first to directly compare bacterial contamination of poultry products sold in U.S. supermarkets from food producers who use antibiotics and from those who claim they do not. The study focused on antibiotic resistance, specifically fluoroq
New York University biologists have uncovered how the innate immune system in mice’s brains fights viral infection of neurons. The findings, published as the cover study in the latest issue of Virology, show that proteins in neurons fight the virus at multiple stages–by preventing the formation of viral RNA and proteins, and blocking the virus’ release, which could infect other cells in the brain.
“There is no magic bullet in fighting viral infections in neurons,” sai
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