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• Animals learn to fine-tune their sniffs
• Monkeys put off sex by bystanders
• To Treat Emotional Toll of Medical School, Physician Prescribes Shakespeare
• NASA Rover's First Soil Studies Help Fingerprint Martian Minerals
• American Consumers Overvalue U.S. Produced Apparel
• New Study Finds A Common Bond Between School Bullies and Their Targets: Alcohol Abuse
• Many Cancer Survivors Face Health-Related Quality of Life Issues
• Mastering weight-maintenance skills before embarking on diet helps women avoid backsliding
• Soda consumption, screen time, team sports at school influence students' weight
• Low-Resistance Connections Facilitate Use of Multi-walled Carbon Nanotubes for Interconnects
• Neuroscientists identify a brain region that can switch between new and old habits.
• New Tool Aims To Ensure Software Security Policies Reflect User Needs
• New Evidence Suggests Certain Anesthetics Highjack the Brain's Natural Sleep Circuitry
• The pathways of epidemics

Animals learn to fine-tune their sniffs Posted: 30 Oct 2012 03:22 PM PDT Animals use their noses to focus their sense of smell, much the same way that humans focus their eyes, new research at the University of Chicago shows. A research team studying rats found that animals adjust their sense of smell through sniffing techniques that bring scents to receptors in different parts of the nose. The sniffing patterns changed according to what kind of substance the rats were attempting to detect. read more

Monkeys put off sex by bystanders Posted: 30 Oct 2012 03:07 PM PDT Monkeys shy away from bystanders during copulation, irrespective of the bystanders' gender or rank. The new study, by Anne Overduin - de Vries and her team from the Biomedical Primate Research Centre in the Netherlands, also suggests that sneaky sex is opportunistic rather than a tactical deception i.e. intentional hiding of sexual behavior. Their work is published online in Springer's journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. read more

To Treat Emotional Toll of Medical School, Physician Prescribes Shakespeare Posted: 30 Oct 2012 03:03 PM PDT Students may begin their medical school careers riding on a cloud of altruism and goodwill, but it’s not long before the grueling schedule, avalanche of new vocabulary and stubborn patients can take a toll. To return the student brain to a state of balance, David Watts, MD, UCSF professor of clinical medicine, argues that a healthy dose of literature — poems and stories, specifically — be a core part of the student experience. read more

NASA Rover's First Soil Studies Help Fingerprint Martian Minerals Posted: 30 Oct 2012 02:51 PM PDT NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has completed initial experiments showing the mineralogy of Martian soil is similar to weathered basaltic soils of volcanic origin in Hawaii. The minerals were identified in the first sample of Martian soil ingested recently by the rover. Curiosity used its Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument (CheMin) to obtain the results, which are filling gaps and adding confidence to earlier estimates of the mineralogical makeup of the dust and fine soil widespread on the Red Planet. read more

American Consumers Overvalue U.S. Produced Apparel Posted: 30 Oct 2012 10:32 AM PDT In today’s globalized economy, a large percentage of apparel products are multinational products as raw materials are produced, transported and assembled in different countries. However, consumers have little information about where and to what extent their apparel is produced domestically or overseas. Now, University of Missouri researchers have found that American consumers place a much higher value on apparel produced entirely in the U.S. with U.S. raw materials as opposed to products produced partially or entirely overseas. read more

New Study Finds A Common Bond Between School Bullies and Their Targets: Alcohol Abuse Posted: 30 Oct 2012 10:28 AM PDT A new study out of the University of Cincinnati finds that both school bullies and their victims are likely to abuse alcohol after a bullying episode. Keith King, a University of Cincinnati professor of health promotion, along with Rebecca Vidourek, a UC assistant professor of health promotion, will present early findings of a new study on Oct. 29, at the 140th annual meeting of the American Public Health Association in San Francisco. read more

Many Cancer Survivors Face Health-Related Quality of Life Issues Posted: 30 Oct 2012 10:23 AM PDT Beating cancer is just the first step. More than one third of the 12.6 million cancer survivors in the United States have physical or mental problems that put their overall health in jeopardy, according to researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. Their study, published in the October issue of the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, found that 25 percent of cancer survivors reported poor physical health and 10 percent reported poor mental health as compared to 10 percent and 6 percent, respectively, of adults without cancer. read more

Mastering weight-maintenance skills before embarking on diet helps women avoid backsliding Posted: 30 Oct 2012 10:20 AM PDT Would you take part in a weight-loss program in which you were explicitly asked not to lose any weight for the first eight weeks? read more

Soda consumption, screen time, team sports at school influence students' weight Posted: 30 Oct 2012 10:15 AM PDT Soda consumption, TV and video/computer games, and the frequency of meals heavily influenced students' weight in an Indiana University study that examined the impact of a school-based obesity intervention program over an 18-month period. More soda consumption and screen time meant students were more likely to be overweight or to gain weight. The more frequently students ate meals each day, the less likely they were to stay overweight or gain weight during the study, which examined the Healthy, Energetic, Ready, Outstanding, Enthusiastic Schools program. read more

Low-Resistance Connections Facilitate Use of Multi-walled Carbon Nanotubes for Interconnects Posted: 30 Oct 2012 10:06 AM PDT Using a new method for precisely controlling the deposition of carbon, researchers have demonstrated a technique for connecting multi-walled carbon nanotubes to the metallic pads of integrated circuits without the high interface resistance produced by traditional fabrication techniques. read more

Neuroscientists identify a brain region that can switch between new and old habits. Posted: 30 Oct 2012 09:58 AM PDT Habits are behaviors wired so deeply in our brains that we perform them automatically. This allows you to follow the same route to work every day without thinking about it, liberating your brain to ponder other things, such as what to make for dinner. read more

New Tool Aims To Ensure Software Security Policies Reflect User Needs Posted: 30 Oct 2012 09:30 AM PDT Researchers from North Carolina State University and IBM Research have developed a new natural language processing tool that businesses or other customers can use to ensure that software developers have a clear idea of the security policies to be incorporated into new software products. read more

New Evidence Suggests Certain Anesthetics Highjack the Brain's Natural Sleep Circuitry Posted: 30 Oct 2012 09:25 AM PDT A new study by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania demonstrates in an animal model that a commonly used inhaled anesthetic drug, isoflurane, works by directly causing sleep-promoting neurons in the brain to activate, thereby hijacking our natural sleep circuitry. The findings are the latest work by investigators in the Center for Anesthesia Research at Penn who are exploring how anesthetics interact within the central nervous system to cause a state of unconsciousness. read more

The pathways of epidemics Posted: 30 Oct 2012 09:19 AM PDT Epidemics could be more effectively contained in the future. A new computer-aided method developed by researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig identifies those persons in the population who propagate an infection most strongly. In contrast to other methods, this process is distinguished by significantly less computational effort than comparably precise ones in estimating the actual number of people who are directly or indirectly infected by a specific person. read more

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