University of Florida
While many corporate reform advocates urge companies to add outside board members to guard against corporate fraud and deception, that approach may actually exacerbate an already massive problem of directors being too cozy with the very people they're supposed to be overseeing, researchers say.
Oh, what a tangled Web is weaved as rapidly growing numbers of married people sneak into Internet chat rooms for romantic or sexual thrills they think they aren't getting from their spouses, a new University of Florida study finds. "Never before has the dating world been so handy for married men and women looking for a fling," said Beatriz Avila Mileham, who conducted the research for her doctoral dissertation in counselor education at UF. "With cybersex, there is no longer any need for secret trips to obscure motels. An online liaison may even take place in the same room with one's spouse."
A mammoth sky survey led by University of Florida astronomers has uncovered seven planet-forming disks in clusters of young stars, doubling the number of such disks discovered and expanding the territory that might yield new planets.
Fear is a factor in human behavior, but behold the power of cheese - oozing, maggot-ridden cheese. Snarling dogs and other threatening images activate distinctly different regions of the brain compared with disgusting images of roaches feeding on cheese pizza or public bathrooms no one would dare use, according to scientists at the University of Florida?s Evelyn F. and William L. McKnight Brain Institute writing in the current online issue of the journal Biological Psychiatry. In addition, UF psychiatrists have found that healthy volunteers and people with obsessive-compulsive disorders, or OCD, respond in a like manner to threatening images, but those with OCD are profoundly more affected by disgusting ones.
The common belief that remaining childless leads to loneliness or depression in the elderly is contradicted by a new University of Florida study, which instead found similar levels of well-being among parents and people without children in their later years. At the same time, having children is no guarantee of happiness later in life, said Tanya Koropeckyj-Cox, a UF sociology professor who conducted the study.
A massive study aimed at settling the long-standing debate over the usefulness of calcium antagonists for treating high blood pressure has shown the drugs are part of a safe and effective regimen for patients who don't respond to standard medicines - or who stop taking them because of bothersome side effects, University of Florida researchers report.
Move over, man the toolmaker: The idea of men as stone tool producers may need some rechiseling, say University of Florida scientists who found women sometimes are the masters. The research among an Ethiopian group indicates stone tool working is not just a male activity, but rather that women probably had an active part in creating stone tools, one of the most ubiquitous materials found on prehistoric sites.
Eye diseases like glaucoma could one day be treated by pharmaceuticals delivered through contact lenses. Chemical engineers from the University of Florida say they've been able to make soft contact lenses containing tiny embedded particles that slowly release drugs directly where they're needed. The research was presented today at the 225th national meeting of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society, held this week in New Orleans.
The offer of a reward may help police track down a suspect or lead to the return of a lost wedding ring, but it won't get Internet users to give out personal information, a University of Florida study shows. People are actually less likely to type their name, address and other personal information into a Web site for a reward because they tend to regard the offer as suspicious, according to the study, which appears in the 2002 Advances in Consumer Research.
Most people feel full about 10 minutes after they begin eating, but for those who are obese, it may take almost twice as long for their brains to get the message, according to researchers at the University of Florida's Evelyn F. and William L. McKnight Brain Institute. Through innovative use of neuroimaging, UF scientists successfully pinpointed when the brain responds to changing hormone levels in the body that signal satiety. The finding raises the possibility that a delayed feeling of fullness or the inability to feel satisfied while eating could perpetuate obesity, making treatment difficult, they report in the February issue of Psychiatry Annals.
Black magic is growing paler as the mysterious practices once used to "poison" evil slave masters attract a larger following among white Americans, who frequent conjure shops and seek voodoo rites on vacations, a new study finds.
Will bananas really become extinct within the next decade? Not likely says a plant pathologist with the American Phytopathological Society (APS). The plant pathologist is speaking out in response to an article that recently appeared in New Scientist depicting possible extinction due to the impact of two diseases, Black Sigatoka and Panama disease, on the global production of bananas. "Diseases are, and will remain, major constraints to both export and subsistence production of banana, and there is no doubt that Black Sigatoka and Panama disease constitute the most important threats," said Randy C. Ploetz, Professor at the University of Florida's Tropical Research and Education Center. "However, it is unlikely that these problems will cause production to decrease greatly in the next decade, let alone that the crop will become extinct," said Ploetz.
If you are among the millions who receive flowers on Valentine's Day, you likely will put your nose to a rose, only to find you can't catch a whiff of your favorite floral aroma. And it isn't because your sense of smell has diminished. Plant breeding has led to bigger, longer-lasting blooms, but in the process many flowers have lost their scents - a trend University of Florida researchers hope to reverse. The researchers are investigating ways to put scent back in, either through genetic engineering or by developing chemical formulations that might be used through a spray application.
U.S. soldiers fighting in today's high-tech military force will be much more likely to survive traumatic brain injuries if University of Florida researchers succeed in developing a blood test to assess the severity of head wounds on the battlefield, U.S. Department of Defense officials say. Such a test can't come soon enough for the department, which has allocated $2.2 million to help scientists at UF's McKnight Brain Institute and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research develop the first routine diagnostic tool to define the scope of such injuries. Penetrating brain injuries claim 25 percent of soldiers killed in battle, according to department officials, yet there is no effective way to diagnose traumatic brain injury short of a brain scan, which is not practical in combat settings.
To detect toxic explosive residues in the soil - including unexploded artillery shells and other weapons - Florida researchers are using genetic engineering to modify microbes and plants that can be used as "biosensors." The three-year research project, supported by a $2.3 million contract from the U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency, will help clean up thousands of acres of land that have been used for military training in the United States and abroad.
