Health
The iPod is not just for music any more. Radiologists from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and their colleagues at other institutions from as far away as Europe and Australia are now using iPod devices to store medical images. "This is what we call using off the shelf, consumer market technology," says Osman Ratib, M.D., Ph.D., professor and vice-chairman of radiologic services at UCLA. "Technology coming from the consumer market is changing the way we do things in the radiology department."
Even though men are often perceived to be at the top, especially in the corporate world, new gender research from Purdue University shows that men are not generally the preferred gender. This new research shows that when adults' automatic attitudes are measured, they have more positive feelings about women as a group. ''This seems contradictory to other research out there, because men generally enjoy higher status,'' said Stephanie Goodwin, an assistant professor of psychological sciences who studies the social cognitive effects of biases and prejudices. ''Even today, men are generally the ones in positions of power in the family and the workplace, and they tend to make more money.''
Scientists from MSU have uncovered a previously unknown metabolic mechanism used by plants to create seed oil. The results, described Wednesday in the British journal Nature, address a longstanding question in plant biology -- why do oilseed plants rely on a seemingly inefficient metabolic process to produce such prodigious amount of energy-rich oil? The answer, according to the MSU team, is that plant seeds are more efficient than anyone thought. ''Seeds achieve this high efficiency by using long-known biochemical reactions that are combined in an unconventional way, which had not been expected by biochemists,'' said J?rg Schwender, MSU plant biology professor and lead author of the study.
A good night's sleep may be the remedy for a bad day at work, suggests a new University of Florida study on the unexplored relationship between job satisfaction and the shifting moods of employees. Employees who have stressful days bring their negative moods home with them at night, but in most cases they disappear by morning, said Timothy Judge, a UF management professor who did the research.
The Air Force unveiled its new Future Total Force concept at the Pentagon Dec. 1, introducing six test cases that will help shape the way the service trains, equips and employs its active- and reserve- component members.
The new plan will help prepare the Air Force for the future by maximizing the capability of equipment and balancing the experience levels of Air Force members, said Lt. Gen. Stephen Wood, Air Force deputy chief of staff for plans and programs. This will reduce redundancies and eliminate outdated operations while improving the service's training, effectiveness and overall combat capability, he said.
Like an episode of ''CSI: Computers,'' a Florida researcher has developed a technique that gives digital detectives twice the forensic evidence they now have to catch all kinds of hackers, from curious teenagers to disgruntled employees to agents of foreign governments. ''If a guy walks into a bank and robs it, leaving footprints behind or his fingerprints on the counter, the forensic analyst would come in and find those traces of what happened.''In the same way, process forensics merges two existing types of digital evidence -- intrusion-detection and checkpointing technology -- to give an investigator the most possible information to crack a case.
''Smart'' drugs capable of targeting specific brain cells to control psychiatric disorders such as autism and schizophrenia may be ready for early clinical trials within three years, with the launch of a $1.5 million project to take place at the Brain Research Centre (BRC), a partnership of the University of British Columbia and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute (VCHRI). The new drugs would be the first significant change in decades to medications used to treat psychiatric disorders.
For the first time, researchers have used human embryonic stem cells to create new insulating tissue for nerve fibers in a live animal model -- a finding that has potentially important implications for treatment of spinal cord injury and multiple sclerosis. Researchers at the UC Irvine Reeve-Irvine Research Center used human embryonic stem cells to create cells called oligodendrocytes, which are the building blocks of the myelin tissue that wraps around and insulates nerve fibers. This tissue is critical for maintenance of proper nerve signaling in the central nervous system, and, when it is stripped away through injury or disease, sensory and motor deficiencies and, in some cases, paralysis result.
High-quality care for depression can improve productivity at work and lower rates of workplace absenteeism, according to a new report. A two-year program for depressed employees treated at 12 primary care practices nationwide improved productivity at work by an average of 6 percent, or an estimated annual value of $1,491 per depressed full-time employee. The program reduced absenteeism by 22 percent in two years, saving the companies an estimated $539 for each depressed full-time employee.
For the fourth consecutive year, the employment picture for chemists is not bright, albeit considerably better than for the nation as a whole, according to the Nov. 1 Employment Outlook section in Chemical & Engineering News. C&EN is the weekly news magazine of the American Chemical Society, the world?s largest scientific society.
Warm workers work better, an ergonomics study at Cornell University finds. Chilly workers not only make more errors but cooler temperatures could increase a worker's hourly labor cost by 10 percent, estimates Alan Hedge, professor of design and environmental analysis and director of Cornell's Human Factors and Ergonomics Laboratory. When the office temperature in a month-long study increased from 68 to 77 degrees Fahrenheit, typing errors fell by 44 percent and typing output jumped 150 percent. Hedge's study was exploring the link between changes in the physical environment and work performance.
High stress levels during infancy and early childhood can lead to the poor development of communication zones in brain cells -- a condition found in mental disorders such as autism, depression and mental retardation. These are the findings of researchers in California and at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry. For the first time, the researchers have identified how increased amounts of a key messenger for stress, the neuropeptide CRH, can inhibit the normal growth of dendrites, which are branch-like protrusions of neurons that send and receive messages from other brain cells.
In article in today's issue of the journal Neuron, two neuroscientists -- Paul Glimcher of New York University and Michael Dorris, a former NYU colleague currently at Queens University, Canada -- offer evidence for the neurological basis for the theories of John Nash, the Nobel-winning economist who pioneered game theory. The findings are a major advancement in the increasingly prominent field of neuroeconomics, which attempts to discover the basis within the brain for the sort of economic decision-making predicted by game theory.
In what may be a first step toward expanding the arsenal against HIV, researchers have successfully targeted an HIV protein that has eluded existing therapies. Researchers targeted Nef, a protein responsible for accelerating the development of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS. Nef was targeted with small molecules synthesized by the researchers -- molecules that disrupted Nef's interaction with other proteins.
Hurricane Ivan made landfall early this morning near the Alabama-Florida border, doing significant damage to coastal communities in its path. NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi and the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans were west of the worst of the storm, and initial reports indicate there is little or no damage to those facilities. Now, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., is making preparations for high winds and rain as Ivan moves inland.
