Ohio State University
Scientists at Ohio State University have found a way to boost the light absorption of a metal mesh up to 1000 times, possibly paving the way for powerful chemical sensors and laboratory instruments. Key to the technology is a new coating technique that enables the mesh to capture and transmit more light through its microscopic holes than would normally be possible. James V. Coe, associate professor of chemistry at Ohio State, and his colleagues also found that if they coated the mesh with molecules of fat, they could use heat to control the amount of light passing through.
New research suggests that the anti-tumor compound endostatin delivers a one-two punch to Kaposi's sarcoma ? the most common AIDS-related cancer. Endostatin seems to strike Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) lesions by preventing existing tumors from growing new blood vessels and also by stopping KS tumor cells from migrating through the body, said Susan Mallery, the study's lead author and a professor in the department of oral and maxillofacial surgery and pathology at Ohio State University's College of Dentistry.
Results of a new study suggest that nearly one in four college students who drink alcohol heavily on a regular basis quit doing so before graduation. While many researchers have looked at why college students stop drinking once they graduate, the current study looks at students who stopped heavy drinking while still in school. Learning what drives heavy drinkers to temper their alcohol use might help researchers create more effective alcohol misuse intervention campaigns on college campuses.
Women who take oral contraceptive pills may get an inaccurate and higher rate of false positive results if their physicians use a specific kind of Pap test. Pathologists at Ohio State University re-checked the Pap smears of 84 women whose initial Pap results were diagnosed as abnormal using the ThinPrep testing method. All women were on an oral contraceptive. In each case, the cells lining the cervix looked like cells infected with the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus (HPV), a leading cause of cervical cancer.
Taking care of chronically ill loved ones over long periods stresses caregivers, as everyone knows, but a new study provides strong new evidence that such continuing stress boosts the risk of age-related diseases by prematurely aging caregivers' immune systems. Levels of a damaging compound known as a proinflammatory cytokine not only increased considerably faster among those taking care of ailing spouses but also continued to increase faster for years after the spouses died.
The race of homicide victims doesn't affect whether police will solve the victim's murder or not, according to a study of one city's police department. Researchers found no evidence that homicide detectives spent less time or effort on cases involving African-American victims, as some police critics have suggested. The high public visibility of murder cases and the fact that homicide detectives are judged entirely on how many cases they solve mean that all murder cases receive similar treatment, said Richard Lundman, co-author of the study and professor of sociology at Ohio State University.
Scientists and computer gamers alike could benefit from a new method for creating soft, realistic shadows in computer-generated images. Engineers at Ohio State University have created computer algorithms that model how light passes through translucent three-dimensional objects or fluids such as water, clouds, fire, and smoke. The result: shadows that begin to approach the realism of Hollywood animation, but don't require as much computer memory to create.
One reason married couples argue about money may be because they don't even agree on how much of it they have, new research suggests. The typical husband says the couple earns 5 percent more income and has 10 percent more total wealth than the wife reports, according to a nationwide study. Meanwhile, the typical wife says the family's debts are about $500 more than reported by her husband.
Poorly controlled diabetes seems to cause cognitive problems in the elderly, a new study reports. The researchers determined that the main reason why diabetic people age 60 and older scored low on a cognitive function test was because of improper management of their disease. ?We knew that there was an association between diabetes and dementia in older people,? said Yousef Mohammad, a study co-author and an assistant professor of neurology at Ohio State University. ?But we found out that there is a difference in cognitive capability between diabetics whose disease is under control and those whose disease isn?t adequately controlled.?
Researchers from Ohio State University found that a common pain relief medication seems to increase the effectiveness of a drug used to treat skin cancer. Experiments in mice showed that the combination of celecoxib -- a prescription-only non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) -- and a cream commonly used to treat nonmelanoma skin cancer was up to 35 percent more effective in reducing the number of skin cancer tumors than treating such lesions with the cream alone.
engineers have examined in unprecedented detail a key manufacturing step that could improve one of the worlds most popular data storage materials: magnetic tape. How a tape is cut in the factory plays a major role in how much data it can hold -- and whether the $6 billion American magnetic tape industry will be able to maintain its market share in the future, according to the comprehensive study.<
A liposuction-like procedure called lipectomy results in a loss of humoral immune protection in two commonly studied rodent models, the prairie vole and the Siberian hamster, scientists have found. The report by a team of researchers at Indiana University, Ohio State University and Johns Hopkins University was made available online this week by The Royal Society. Their study is the first to show that even a moderate loss of fat leads to decreased amounts of infection-fighting IgG antibodies.
A new study reports that energy bars with low or moderate levels of carbohydrates may actually not help dieters lose weight as they promise to do. Proponents of several diet plans ? such as the Atkins and Zone diets ? say low or moderate carbohydrate foods lead to less of an insulin spike in the blood after meals, which helps lead to people burning more fat and losing more weight. However, this new study found that energy bars advertised as having low or moderate levels of carbohydrate don't actually reduce insulin levels in the blood as much as expected. The bottom line is that these energy bars may not contribute to weight loss, at least not in the way that manufacturers are advertising they do.
Anxiety is often poorly managed in patients recovering from a heart attack, new research reports. While medical records revealed that nearly three-quarters of 101 patients in the study had received some sort of treatment for anxiety, symptoms of anxiety were documented on less than half of the patients' charts. "Some of these people were treated for anxiety even though there was nothing in their chart to suggest they were anxious to begin with," said Susan Frazier, the lead author of the study, which appears in a recent issue of the journal Heart and Lung. Frazier is an associate professor of nursing at Ohio State University.
A new study strongly indicates that the primary cause of nearsightedness is heredity. The study also suggests that the amount of time a child spends studying or reading plays a minor role in the development of myopia, or nearsightedness. The researchers found that, per week, myopic children spent more time studying and reading for pleasure and less time playing sports than non-myopic children. Myopic children also scored higher on a test of basic reading and language skills than did children with normal vision.
