He is ‘Doctor Fixit’ for broken hearts

May 31, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Chandigarh, May 31 (IANS) He may not have suffered a broken heart himself or even qualified as a medicine man, but that has not stopped others from calling him ‘Doctor Rehabilitation’, ‘Doctor Feel-good’ and ‘Doctor Fixit’.

Ranjay Vardhan, an assistant professor at a post-graduate girls’ college in Chandigarh, specialises in a unique area – mending ‘broken hearts’ – which is not just for those who were disappointed in love.

Having established the Broken Heart Rehabilitation Society in Chandigarh in 1991, Vardhan is all set to expand the sphere of the unique venture. He will be launching a dedicated website for broken hearts within a couple of months.

‘Broken hearts is not only about people who fail in love. It can be any failure in life that can leave anyone with a broken heart. Actually everyone, at some stage in life, has a broken heart. This is where this society can help,’ Vardhan told IANS.

Vardhan, a sociologist by profession, even penned a book in 2008 – ‘Coping with Broken Hearts – World’s First Self-Help Book for Broken Hearts’, to let his idea reach out to the maximum number of people.

‘The provocation for setting up the Broken Hearts Society was that I could see many people around me who were upset at not achieving things in life and in love. No one was doing anything for them. So I started working in this direction and helping people through counselling. This was the first of its kind venture in the world,’ Vardhan claimed.

The society, which now has 100 members, does personal and e-mail (brokenheartrehabilitation@gmail.com) counselling for anyone who needs assistance in this regard.

‘Many people approach us for counselling,’ he said.

‘A few weeks back, a young couple came to me. They had strained relations and had decided to divorce,’ Vardhan told IANS.

‘After listening to both of them we discovered there was just a communication gap between them. We told them to go out on a holiday trip, to attend parties and to go for dinner on every weekend. Through this, they got time to listen to each other and settled scores. Now they are living just like any other compatible couple.’

Talking about another case that involved a 73-year-old man, a resident of Patiala, Vardhan said: ‘This man had bitter marriage experiences twice in his life. When he came to me, his third marriage was also on the verge of collapsing.

‘Initially he used to cry like a child and say nobody loves him. He had 10 sessions with us and we taught him how to hold his nerve and keep his cool through meditation. He was self-centred and an egoist but now he has completely changed. In fact, he is also contributing to our movement,’ said Vardhan.

Vardhan’s unique efforts for broken hearts found him an entry in the Limca Book of Records in 1999. He also has knowledge of eight languages (French, German, Sanskrit, English, Hindi, Persian, Punjabi and Urdu).

Vardhan, who is headed to Harvard University to present a paper at an international conference on Sociology in June, has a dream ‘to get the Nobel Prize’.

‘I may not have got the Nobel Prize yet but I did get a book of mine released at the Nobel Prize hall!’ Vardhan said. He has written five books, including one on ‘Single Women – a Study of Spinsters’, and scores of papers so far.

In 1997, Vardhan organised what he calls the ‘world’s first rehab camp for broken hearts’ in Chandigarh May 3. He has even dedicated May 3 as Broken Hearts Day.

Vardhan says that losing heart after any failure, in love or life, is not the way. ‘There are ways to overcome these things. We can provide some,’ he added.

(Jaideep Sarin can be contacted at jaideep.s@ians.in)

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Self-perceived age of older Chinese consumers younger than actual age

May 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, May 19 (ANI): Older Chinese consumers perceive themselves younger than their actual age, an expert has found.

He also found that these perceptions affect marketing strategies aimed at these consumers.

Rui Yao, a University of Missouri assistant professor, recognized a trend wherein the average age of Chinese citizens has begun to get older quickly ever since the government enacted the one-child policy in 1978 as a form of population control.

“Someone who is 50 doesn’t think they are 50,” Yao said. “They see themselves as 45 or 40 years old.”

A survey of Chinese consumers above the age 50, was conducted across six cities in China. While almost 50 percent of the people surveyed were between the ages of 50 and 59, only about 33 percent perceived themselves as being that old. Overall, 52 percent of the total respondents perceived themselves to be younger than their actual age, among whom, about 20 percent perceived themselves to be at least 10 years younger and 6 percent had a self-perceived age that was at least 20 years younger than their life age.

“This study shows that when marketing products to this demographic, it is wise to avoid saying they are for older people,” Yao said. “Having a gray hair image, or using the term ‘silver’ isn’t going to be very well received by these consumers. Marketing professionals who hold the old belief that ‘the old man decays’ are challenged to re-evaluate and reposition the older consumer market. People live longer today. The ‘mid-life’ and ‘middle-age’ concepts are shifting. They used to describe those in their 30s and now it appears that the 50s may be the new 30s. Marketers should use more energetic and youthful campaigns. If a product makes them feel younger, they will be more likely to use it.”

Another interesting result was that women were more likely to perceive themselves as younger as compared to men.

Yao’s research included factors like financial risk tolerance, savings behavior and motives, retirement, debt management, and household consumption patterns.

This study was published in the Journal of Family and Economic Issues. (ANI)

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Most married military couples are satisfied

May 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, May 16 (ANI): Majority of married people at an Army post are satisfied with their relationship, despite challenges faced like deployments, a study at Kansas State University has found.

“Because of the stressors that have been on the military and military families, particularly in the last decade, it”s easy to focus on the difficulty and dysfunction of their marriages,” said Jared Anderson, assistant professor of family studies and human services at K-State. “But I think one of the things that this study does is look at what makes these families resilient in the midst of ongoing stress.”

K-State researchers in family studies and human services studied the marital quality of military couples and identified factors that relate to relationship distress.

Their findings showed that the vast majority of people in the sample were non-distressed in their relationship. The researchers include Anderson; Matthew Johnson, graduate student in marriage and family therapy, Manhattan; and Laura Cline, senior in family studies and human services, Overland Park.

Anderson studies how couples develop and maintain strong marriages, and conversely, the factors that contribute to relationship problems. By understanding factors associated with distress, he said interventions could be developed to target at-risk marriages.

“I think it”s just as important, or more important, to learn factors of non-distressed marriages because that gives us a picture into what we can actually do to replicate that for other families,” Anderson said.

He said there is much information about successful civilian marriages, which can be partly applied to military marriages, though there are differences. The researchers said it is important to understand marital quality in military couples because it”s associated with marital stability and personal well-being. Additionally, the quality of a soldier”s marriage has potential implications for soldier retention and readiness.

The study used data collected in spring 2008 and included a sample of 700 U.S. Army soldiers and 390 spouses of soldiers at Fort Riley. Participants completed a survey that included demographic and quality of life questions, including measures for marital satisfaction.

After analyzing the data, the researchers found that the majority of the participants fell in the non-distressed range of their marital satisfaction. The findings showed that 81 percent of soldiers and 85 percent of spouses were categorized as relationally non-distressed.

The researchers also looked at factors that differentiated the participants categorized as distressed and non-distressed in their relationship. Overall, soldiers were 1.7 times more likely to be relationally distressed than the spouses of soldiers in the sample. While no factors were associated with distress or non-distress for the partners of spouses of soldiers, there were several variables linked to relational distress for soldiers.

A greater likelihood of being relationally distressed was associated with soldiers whose families did not accompany them to their current duty station and soldiers with newer marriages, who were dating or engaged versus being married and who were lower in rank.

The study also looked for an association between the number of deployments and relational distress. Almost all of the soldiers in the study sample had been deployed at least once, and one-third of the soldiers had been deployed two or more times.

“Deployment didn”t factor into distress,” Anderson said. “It”s interesting, but within context it makes sense.” (ANI)

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Music helps Alzheimer”s sufferers in remembering new information

May 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, May 13 (ANI): Patients with Alzheimer”s disease (AD) are better able to remember new verbal information when it is provided in the context of music even when compared to healthy, older adults, claim researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM).

The findings, which currently appear on-line in Neuropsychologia, offer possible applications in treating and caring for patients with AD.

AD, the most common form of dementia, is characterized by a general, progressive decline in cognitive function that typically presents first as impaired episodic memory. The onset and rate of this decline tends to vary across cognitive domains, and some functions may be preferentially spared in patients with AD.

To determine whether music can enhance new learning of information, AD patients and healthy controls were presented with either the words spoken, or the lyrics sung with full musical accompaniment along with the printed lyrics on a computer screen. The participants were presented visually with the lyrics to 40 songs. Twenty of the song lyrics were accompanied by their corresponding sung recording and 20 were accompanied by their spoken recording.

After each presentation, participants were asked to indicate whether or not they were previously familiar with the song they had just heard. The BUSM researchers found accuracy was greater in the sung condition than in the spoken condition for AD patients but not for healthy older controls.

“Our results confirmed our hypothesis that patients with AD performed better on a task of recognition memory for the lyrics of songs when those lyrics were accompanied by a sung recording than when they were accompanied by a spoken recording,” said senior author Brandon Ally, PhD, an assistant professor of neurology and director of Neuropsychology Research at the BUSM Center for Translational Cognitive Neuroscience. “However, contrary to our hypothesis, healthy older adults showed no such benefit of music, he added. (ANI)

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Vaccine response could depend on your sex

May 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, May 13 (ANI): Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have claimed that biological differences between the sexes could be a significant predictor of responses to vaccines.

The scientists examined published data from numerous adult and child vaccine trials and found that sex is a fundamental, but often overlooked predictor of vaccine response that could help predict the efficacy of combating infectious disease.

The review is featured in the May 2010 issue of The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

“Sex can affect the frequency and severity of adverse effects of vaccination, including fever, pain and inflammation,” said Sabra Klein, PhD, lead author of the review and an assistant professor at the Bloomberg School”s W. Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology. “This is likely due to the fact that women typically mount stronger immune responses to vaccinations compared to men. In some cases, women need substantially less of a vaccine to mount the same response as men. Pregnancy is also a factor that can alter immune responses to vaccines.” (ANI)

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“Ancient city of ”modern” galaxies” discovered

May 12, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, May 12 (ANI): Astronomers led by Texas A&M scientists have identified what may be called the “ancient city of ”modern” galaxies”.

The group of roughly 60 galaxies, called CLG J02182-05102, is nearly 10 billion years old, and possibly the earliest, most distant cluster of galaxies ever detected.

However, it”s not the size nor the age of the cluster that amazes the team of researchers led by Dr. Casey Papovich, an assistant professor in the Texas A&M Department of Physics and Astronomy and member of the George P. and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy.

Rather, it”s the surprisingly modern appearance of CLG J02182-05102 that has them baffled – a huge, red collection of galaxies typical of only present-day galaxies.

Papovich said: “It”s like we dug an archaeological site in Rome and found pieces of modern Rome amongst the ruins.”

While its neighbouring galaxies appear vastly smaller and far fainter, Papovich says CLG J02182-05102 stands out as a densely populated bundle of ancient galaxies.

Enormous red galaxies at the centre contain almost 10 times as many stars as our Milky Way, he notes, combining for a total size that rivals that of the most monstrous galaxies of our nearby universe.

Before now, Papovich says, such a finding would be considered by many astronomers to be highly unlikely, considering the time frame in which they were found.

Papovich said: “The predictions are that these things should be very rare when the universe was 4 billion years old, and yet, we found them.

“Not only did we find them, it looks for all intents and purposes like they had already formed completely and evolved into the large concentrations of galaxies that we see in clusters today.”

Exactly why these particular galaxies are fully formed that early is what Papovich and his collaborators – which include astronomers from NASA”s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) as well as Carnegie Observatories – hope to one day uncover, but for now, studying CLG J02182-05102 could help them and other researchers better understand how galaxies form and cluster in general.

The study will appear in Astrophysical Journal. (ANI)

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Twitter sentiments may soon replace public opinion polls

May 12, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, May 12 (ANI): The next time you want to get a quick read on the public”s opinion on politics or current events, consider sampling Twitter.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have determined that, at least in some instances, combing Twitter for data can be as good a way of researching opinions as conducting an actual poll.

Computer analysis of sentiments expressed in a billion Twitter messages during 2008-2009 yielded measures of consumer confidence and of presidential job approval similar to those of well-established public opinion polls, the researchers report.

Noah Smith, assistant professor of language technologies and machine learning in the School of Computer Science, said that the findings suggest that analyzing the text found in streams of tweets could become a cheap, rapid means of gauging public opinion on at least some subjects.

He, however, warned that tools for extracting public opinion from social media text are still crude and social media remain in their infancy, so the extent to which these methods could replace or supplement traditional polling is still unknown.

“With seven million or more messages being tweeted each day, this data stream potentially allows us to take the temperature of the population very quickly,” Smith said.

“The results are noisy, as are the results of polls. Opinion pollsters have learned to compensate for these distortions, while we”re still trying to identify and understand the noise in our data. Given that, I”m excited that we get any signal at all from social media that correlates with the polls,” Smith added.

The study findings will be presented May 25 at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence”s International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media in Washington, D.C. (ANI)

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Palaeontologists unearth previously undocumented primate in Egypt

May 12, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, May 12 (ANI): An odd mosaic of dental features discovered in northern Egypt has brought to light a hitherto undocumented primate.

The highly-specialized primate called Nosmips aenigmaticus is believed to have lived in Africa about 37 million years ago.

Because it is only known from its teeth, the palaeontologists who discovered it don”t know what its body looked like, but the find likely represents an ancient African lineage whose discovery makes early primate evolution on that continent more complicated.

Lead researcher Erik Seiffert, assistant professor of Anatomical Sciences at New York”s Stony Brook Universit, said: “It comes as a bit of a shock to find a primate that defies classification.”

According to Seiffert, during the last 30 years or so, three major primate groups were established as being present in Africa some 55 to 34 million years ago – early monkeys, lemur-like primates, and an extinct group called adapiforms.

But the newly discovered primate”s teeth place Nosmips in Africa at the same time.

What”s more, its teeth suggest it could be an evolutionary oddity that is not closely related to any of these groups.

Seiffert said: “When you find the teeth of a fossil primate, it”s usually pretty clear where it fits into the family tree.

“There are only a few species that nobody agrees about and that really can”t be placed into any of the major primate groups. These mystery fossils must have something important to tell us about primate evolution.”

Right now Nosmips is one of those rare mystery fossils and so far is only known by 12 teeth, most of which were found in isolation at a site in the Fayum Depression about 40 miles outside Cairo, Egypt.

The discoveries result from work during several field seasons over nine years.

Paleontologists usually identify primate fossils by their teeth because teeth are the most durable parts of the body and are most likely to fossilize, and so are most likely to be recovered.

Seiffert said: “We were lucky to find even two teeth of Nosmips in each field season over the course of the nine years.

“That amounts to over nine months of continuous work. Only through working over such a long time span were we able to piece together the arrangement of Nosmips” teeth.”

Analysis shows Nosmips had a rare combination of enlarged and elongated premolars with simple upper molars.

It also had premolar teeth that had taken on the form of molars, instead of being relatively simple as in most other primates.

Seiffert said: “Nosmips appears to be a highly specialized member of a previously undocumented and presumably quite ancient endemic African primate lineage.

“As time goes on and more discoveries are made, it will be fascinating to see how different lineages contributed to primate diversity in the Eocene of Africa,” Seiffert said.

The findings of the project have appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (ANI)

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Botox can actually cause wrinkles

May 11, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Melbourne, May 11 (ANI): Botox, known as the perfect solution to get rid of signs of ageing, can actually cause extra wrinkles.

Botox is a toxin injected under the skin, which paralyses facial muscles, smoothing lines and wrinkles.

Dr Becker, an assistant professor of dermatology at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, suggested that muscle groups that have not been injected with Botox will still find a way to make expressions, leading to more lines.

“Paralysis of a set of muscles might lead to recruitment of other muscle groups in an attempt to reproduce the conditioned activity being blocked – resulting in more prominent muscle activity in adjacent regions,” News.com.au quoted Becker as ssaying.

Women who have had Botox injections typically have lines across the bridge of the nose.

Celebrities Amanda Holden, Kylie Minogue, and Dannii Minogue reportedly have these lines.

The study has been published in The Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology. (ANI)

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Teen girls disclose more than boys to parents about their dating habits

May 7, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, May 7 (ANI): Teenage girls talk more to parents about their dating habits than boys, according to a new study.

What’s more, both sexes generally prefer to talk to their mothers.

However, the new study found that girls and boys are equally close-mouthed about issues involving sex and what they do with their dates while unsupervised. And in this case, teens were no more eager to talk to their mothers than they were their fathers.

Results showed that the amount of information parents hear from their teenagers about dating depend on a variety of matters, including age, gender, and what aspect of dating the topic involves.

“Many parents become frustrated because they feel that the lack of communication with their teenage children is evidence of increasing distance or diminishing influence,” explained Christopher Daddis, co-author of the study and assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State University at Marion.

“What we found is that adolescents are willing to talk to their parents about some issues, but those issues may change as they grow older and they feel more autonomous.”

The research appeared in a recent issue of the Journal of Adolescence.

The study involved a survey of 222 adolescents in the 9th or 12th grade at a central Ohio high school. (ANI)

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Social media in classrooms may not improve communication

May 6, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, May 6 (ANI): A recent study by the Lab for Social Computing at Rochester Institute of Technology indicates that the use of social media in classroom settings has negligible effect on encouraging communication amongst students.

The results indicate that social media in classrooms may not prompt the same response as on MySpace or Facebook and does little to improve face-to-face communication amongst students.

“Many social media advocates have argued that the use of these tools in classroom settings could greatly enhance interaction and learning and assist shyer, more reserved students in becoming more involved, as has been seen in other online environments,” says Susan Barnes, associate director of the Lab for Social Computing and the leader of the research team. “However, our findings show that the incorporation of social media had no measurable impact on social connections, to the point that students did not consider other members of the class to be part of their social network.”

The research will be expanded to include multiple educational formats with different social media applications to measure how social connections differ from the classroom setting.

The results will aid educational planners to create better social media formats that have a greater impact on student social connections.

“The issues surrounding poor social network construction within online educational environments points to greater opportunities to examine how technology and mediated software can be better designed to suit the types of communication and interactions desired by our students,” says Christopher Egert, assistant professor of informatics, interactive games and media and member of the team. (ANI)

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Kids with hearing loss in 1 ear fall behind in language skills

May 5, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, May 5 (ANI): Loss of hearing in one ear hurts children’s ability to comprehend and use language, according to a new study.

“For many years, pediatricians and educators thought that as long as children have one normal hearing ear, their speech and language would develop normally,” says lead author Judith E. C. Lieu, MD, a Washington University ear, nose and throat specialist at St. Louis Children”s Hospital.

“But then a few studies began suggesting these children might have problems in school. Now our study has shown that on average, children with hearing loss in one ear have poorer oral language scores than children with hearing in both ears,” Lieu says.

Hearing loss in one ear can stem from congenital abnormalities in the ear, head trauma or infections such as meningitis. Children with hearing loss in one ear may go undetected because they can appear to have normal hearing. Their difficulty hearing may be mistaken simply for lack of attention or selective hearing, says Lieu, assistant professor of otolaryngology.

Even children with recognized one-side hearing loss often aren”t fitted with hearing aids and often don”t receive accommodations for disability.

The study will be published in the June issue of the journal Pediatrics. (ANI)

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Many parents don”t think their kids are interested in sex: Study

May 4, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, May 4 (ANI): A new study from North Carolina State University has shown that many parents think that their children aren’t interested in sex – but that everyone else’s kids are.

“Parents I interviewed had a very hard time thinking about their own teen children as sexually desiring subjects,” said Dr. Sinikka Elliott, an assistant professor of sociology at NC State and author of the study.

“At the same time, parents view their teens’ peers as highly sexual, even sexually predatory,” Elliott added.

By taking this stance, the parents shift the responsibility for potential sexual activity to others – attributing any such behavior to peer pressure, coercion or even entrapment.

For example, Elliott says, parents of teenage boys were often concerned that their sons may be lured into sexual situations by teenage girls who, the parents felt, may use sex in an effort to solidify a relationship.

The parents of teenage girls, meanwhile, expressed fears that their daughters would be taken advantage of by sexually driven teenage boys.

These beliefs contribute to stereotypes of sexual behavior that aren’t helpful to parents or kids.

“By using sexual stereotypes to absolve their children of responsibility for sexual activity, the parents effectively reinforce those same stereotypes,” Elliott said.

Parents’ use of these stereotypes also paints teen heterosexual relationships in an unflattering, adversarial light, Elliott said and noted the irony of this: “Although parents assume their kids are heterosexual, they don’t make heterosexual relationships sound very appealing.”

The study has been published in the May issue of Symbolic Interaction. (ANI)

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Obese kids are bullied more

May 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, May 3 (ANI): A new study has shown that obese children are more likely to be bullied regardless of gender, race, socioeconomic status, social skills or academic achievement.

A research team, led by Julie C. Lumeng, assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases at the University of Michigan”s C.S. Mott Children”s Hospital, studied 821 children who were participating in the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development.

These children were recruited at birth in 10 study sites around the country.

The researchers evaluated the relationship between the child”s weight status and the odds of being bullied as reported by the child, mother, and teacher.

The study accounted for grade level in school, gender, race, family income-to-needs ratio, racial and socioeconomic composition of the school, and child social skills and academic achievement as reported by mothers and teachers.

The researchers found that obese children had higher odds of being bullied no matter their gender, race, family socioeconomic status, school demographic profile, social skills or academic achievement.

The authors concluded that being obese, by itself, increases the likelihood of being a victim of bullying. Interventions to address bullying in schools are badly needed, Lumeng added.

The study will be published in the June issue of the journal Pediatrics. (ANI)

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Facebook fans find searching for pals best

April 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, April 24 (ANI): Facebook users enjoy searching for friends the most, a new American study has found.

Kevin Wise, an assistant professor of strategic communication at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, examined people”s habits when they navigate Facebook.

Wise says previous studies on social networking sites involved merely surveying study participants. Wise conducted his study differently.

He said: “Rather than asking people to report their uses of Facebook, we wanted to see them in action.

“We wanted to see if there is a way to categorize Facebook use, not based on what people say about it, but what they actually do when they are using it.”

During the study, participants were seated at a computer and told to navigate Facebook for a determined amount of time.

Participants could view anything they wished during that time, as long as they stayed on the Facebook website. Using screen-capturing software, Wise was able to view every action that each participant made while on the site.

The researchers attached sensors to various parts of the participants” bodies to measure potential emotional responses as the participants navigated Facebook.

Wise categorized participants” actions into two different groups: social browsing and social searching.

He defines social browsing as navigating the site without a targeted goal in mind.

Wise says people use social browsing when they survey the general landscape, such as their newsfeed or wall, without looking for specific information.

Wise defines social searching as searching the social networking site with the goal of finding certain information about a specific person, group, or event.

He found that participants tended to spend much more time on social searching than social browsing. Not only did participants spend more time on social searching, but they seemed to enjoy it more as well.

Wise said: “We found a more positive response from participants during social searching, or when they had homed in on a particular target.

“Ultimately, it appears that Facebook use is largely a series of transitions between browsing the environment, then focusing in on something interesting or relevant.”

Wise says that this was an exploratory study to move past how people say they use Facebook in favour of studying their actual behaviour.

He says that there are many more questions about how people use social networking sites that he hopes to study in the future. (ANI)

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Airport security could miss contraband due to easy-to-spot prohibited items

April 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, April 21 (ANI): Airport security can fail to spot banned items like box cutters if they identify an easy-to-spot prohibited item like a water bottle, a new American research has found.

The Duke University study has appeared online in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied.

For the study, Stephen Mitroff, an assistant professor of psychology & neuroscience at Duke and his group asked college students to identify specific targets on a computer display – in this case, two perpendicular lines that form the letter “T” amid distracters, such as Ls and non-Ts.

In some cases, Ts were easy to spot, and in other cases more difficult because they blended in with the background.

In an initial set of experiments, Mitroff and his team altered the frequency of easy- and hard-to-spot targets.

When the two kinds of targets appeared with equal frequency, subjects apparently had no trouble finding the hard-to-spot target in the presence of an easy one.

But when the easy-to-spot item was two or three times more common, the subjects tended to overlook the hard-to-spot targets.

When Mitroff”s group doubled the time allowed for each search, they saw that the students used barely a second of extra time but were significantly more accurate.

Mitroff said: “It didn”t seem to do with time itself, but it seems to be the time pressure.

“When you have the impending time pressure of going quickly, you are more likely to miss a second target.”

Interestingly, the data do not suggest subjects miss the second targets because they are too quick to end their search, an idea that would have bolstered the original satisfaction-of-search principle.

Mitroff said: “There seems to be some other mechanism, but it”s not exactly clear what it is.”

One possible explanation is an idea called “attentional set,” which suggests that finding one kind of target will make you more likely to find that same type of target rather than a new, different one.

In radiology, it is like finding a fracture, which makes you more likely to find a second fracture rather than some other anomaly.

In an additional set of experiments, the researchers added time and accuracy pressure to the test by introducing small baggage icons that appeared along the top of the screen, mimicking a new bag on the security conveyer belt.

One bag disappeared when subjects finished searching each display.

They earned points for each display and the more quickly and accurately the subjects could identify the targets, the higher the points they received.

For one group of subjects, researchers set the speed of bags based on the each person”s performance in a previous practice session.

That group wasn”t any worse at finding the second target than the first.

In contrast, subjects following a brisk rate set by the researchers were worse at finding the second target.

Mitroff said: “The results fit with what we think would happen if you remove the searcher from seeing the line.”

In a remote search, the screeners will not know whether there is one person or 500 people waiting.

He added: “It”s not in use, but these data suggest that it might be something worth trying.”

Mitroff”s group now plans to replace T-targets with multiple targets of different types, such as tools and bottles. (ANI)

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Simplified test for early breast cancer detection on the anvil

April 17, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Apr 17 (ANI): A library of synthetically produced antibodies that can detect and rapidly validate proteins secreted by breast cancer cells is being built by University of Arkansas researchers.

The researchers’ work will accelerate the process of developing a simple blood test for early detection of breast cancer.

“We want to implement a rapid screen that is sensitive – meaning highly accurate – non-invasive and inexpensive,” said Shannon Servoss, assistant professor of chemical engineering. “Such a test would be easy to use – as easy as a pregnancy test – and applicable to women of all ages, races and ethnicities. The ultimate goal, of course, is early detection of breast cancer.”

At the moment, researchers use specific protein binders called affinity reagents, which are molecules that interact with proteins, to recognize and validate proteins that indicate breast cancer. But this process is tedious and problematic because there are a limited number of affinity reagents available, and techniques to develop them are slow and expensive.

Servoss’s team seeks to overcome these obstacles by developing a collection of affitoids, which are synthetic, peptoid-based affinity reagents. A library of these affitoids, which are inexpensive and easy to make, will facilitate the development of techniques for protein validation.

The affitoids have other advantages. They can be designed to have desired properties, such as structural stability and specificity for a single protein. They also do not have to be limited to breast cancer detection. They could be designed to detect other complex diseases.

“This technique is superior to those currently available because affitoids specific for proteins secreted by breast cancer cells can be rapidly selected from a large collection, which isn’t too expensive to build,” Servoss said. “The selected affitoids will be used to determine a profile – a protein fingerprint – that indicates breast cancer. Of course, all of this is happening at the cell level, before the tumor is detectable.” (ANI)

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Dinosaur skull shape changed drastically during growth

April 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Apr 1 (ANI): University of Michigan paleontologists have claimed that long-necked sauropod dinosaur, Diplodocus, went through drastic changes in skull shape during normal growth.

To reach the conclusion, paleontologists John Whitlock and Jeffrey Wilson, along with Matthew Lamanna from the Carnegie Museum examined the skull of a juvenile sauropod dinosaur, rediscovered in the collections of Pittsburgh”s Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

The finding has been explained in the March issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

“Adult sauropod skulls are rare, but juvenile skulls are even rarer,” said Whitlock, a doctoral candidate in the U-M Museum of Paleontology. “What we do know about the skulls of sauropods like Diplodocus has been based entirely on adults so far.”

“Diplodocus had an unusual skull,” said Wilson, an assistant professor in the Department of Geological Sciences and an assistant curator at the U-M Museum of Paleontology. “Adults had long, square snouts, unlike the rounded or pointed snouts of other sauropods. Up until now, we assumed juveniles did too.”

The small Diplodocus skull, however, suggests that major changes occurred in the skull throughout the animal”s life.

“Although this skull is plainly that of a juvenile Diplodocus, in many ways it is quite different from those of the adults,” Whitlock said. “Like those of most young animals, the eyes are proportionally larger, and the face is smaller. What was unexpected was the shape of the snout—it appears to have been quite pointed, rather than square like the adults. This gives us a whole new perspective on what these animals may have looked like at different points in their lives.”

The researchers believe these changes in skull shape may have been tied to feeding behavior, with adults and juveniles eating different foods to avoid competition. Young Diplodocus, with their narrower snouts, may also have been choosier browsers, selecting high quality plant parts. (ANI)

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Why adoptive parents face postadoption depression

April 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Apr 1 (ANI): Adoptive parents often experience postadoption depression, which they say arises due to unmet or unrealistic expectations, according to research from Purdue University.

The signs and symptoms of depression include depressed mood, decreased interest or pleasure in activities, significant weight changes, difficulty sleeping or excessive sleeping, feeling agitated, fatigue, excessive guilt and shame, and indecisiveness.

“People often hear about postpartum blues when having a baby, but the emotional well-being of adoptive parents once the child is placed in the home is not really talked about. In this study, the majority of the adoptive parents who self-reported having experienced depression after the child was placed in their home often described unmet or unrealistic expectations of him or herself, the child, family and friends, or society,” said Karen J. Foli, an assistant professor of nursing and an adoptive mother.

“For example, some parents shared that they did not anticipate that bonding with their child would be a struggle or that family members or friends would not offer the same support that birthparents enjoy,” she added.

“Postadoption depression not only affects the parents, but it also has an influence on the well-being of the child,” said Foli.

She interviewed 21 adoptive parents about their adoption and depression experiences, as well as 11 adoption experts and professionals.

“Many adoptive parents spend their time during the adoption process demonstrating they are not only going to be fit parents, but super parents, and then they struggle with trying to be the world””s best parent when the child is placed in the home. Adoptive parents also may experience feelings about their legitimacy as a parent, or even surprise if they don””t readily bond with the infant or child,” said Foli.

Other factors that contribute to postadoption depression may include the expectations surrounding the child””s attachment to the parent, a lack of peers, the lack of boundaries with birthparents in open adoptive agreements, and society””s attitude toward adoptive families as a whole.

Adoptive parents are also tired by the time the child comes into the home, said Foli.

They have endured a rigorous adoption process and much of their lives have been out of their control.

“Obtaining that next form or checking that next box while waiting for the child can shift the focus away from parenting and emphasize the process of adoption,” said Foli.

The adoption professionals who participated in the study said parents were often reluctant to admit their struggles out of fear and shame.

Parents also echoed feelings of extreme guilt and confusion over how they were struggling, particularly after their intense longing and eagerness to bring a child home.

The findings are published in this month””s Western Journal of Nursing Research. (ANI)

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Soon, pill that signals it has been swallowed

April 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Apr 1 (ANI): University of Florida engineering researchers are designing a pill which confirms that patients have taken their medication.

The boffins have added a tiny microchip and digestible antenna to a standard pill capsule. The prototype is intended to pave the way for mass-produced pills that, when ingested, automatically alert doctors, loved ones or scientists working with patients in clinical drug trials.

“It is a way to monitor whether your patient is taking their medication in a timely manner,” said Rizwan Bashirullah, UF assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering.

Such a pill is needed because many patients forget, refuse or bungle the job of taking their medication.

The American Heart Association calls patients’ failure to follow prescription regimens “the number one problem in treating illness today.”

Bashirullah, doctoral student Hong Yu, UF materials science and engineering Professor Chris Batich and Neil Euliano of Gainesville-based Convergent Engineering designed and tested a system with two main parts.

One part is the pill, a standard white capsule coated with a label embossed with silvery lines. The lines comprise the antenna, which is printed using ink made of nontoxic, conductive silver nanoparticles. The pill also contains a tiny microchip, one about the size of a period.

When a patient takes the pill, it communicates with the second main element of the system: a small electronic device carried or worn by the patient – for now, a stand-alone device, but in the future perhaps built into a watch or cell phone. The device then signals a cell phone or laptop that the pill has been ingested, in turn informing doctors or family members.

Bashirullah said the pill needs no battery because the device sends it power via imperceptible bursts of extremely low-voltage electricity. The bursts energize the microchip to send signals relayed via the antenna. Eventually the patient’s stomach acid breaks down the antenna – the microchip is passed through the gastrointestinal tract — but not before the pill confirms its own ingestion.

“The vision of this project has always been that you have an antenna that is biocompatible, and that essentially dissolves a little while after entering the body,” Bashirullah said.

The team has successfully tested the pill system in artificial human models, as well as cadavers. (ANI)

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