Culture
DALLAS - Sept. 16, 2019 - Cardiologists know that when patients use a blood pressure cuff at home, they have a significant head start on managing their heart health risk. Now, researchers have learned the added value for African Americans.
BOSTON -Major physical changes occurred in the human heart as people shifted from hunting and foraging to farming and modern life. As a result, human hearts are now less "ape-like" and better suited to endurance types of activity. But that also means those who lead sedentary lives are at greater risk for heart disease. Those are the main conclusions from a unique study led by Aaron L. Baggish, MD, director of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cardiovascular Performance Program.
Ecologists have long tried to understand and anticipate the compositional change of plant species, especially now, as climate and land usage disrupts the way in which plants colonize and expand their communities. Called plant succession, the study of predicting plant communities through time is one of ecology's oldest pursuits.
DURHAM, N.C. -- Anyone who says females are the 'gentle sex' has never met a lemur. Lady lemurs get first dibs on food, steal their mates' favorite sleeping spots and even attack males, swatting or biting those that annoy them.
What gives these female primates the urge and ability to reign supreme while the meeker males give in or get out of the way? New research suggests that female lemurs' bullying behavior may get programmed early, before birth.
Early rice growers unwittingly gave barnyard grass a big hand, helping to give root to a rice imitator that is now considered one of the world's worst agricultural weeds.
New research from Zhejiang University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Washington University in St. Louis provides genomic evidence that barnyard grass (Echinochloa crus-galli) benefited from human cultivation practices, including continuous hand weeding, as it spread from the Yangtze River region about 1,000 years ago.
Bicuspid aortic valve (BAV) is the most common heart valve birth defect and one of the most common birth defects of any type, affecting around 70 million people worldwide. A healthy aortic valve has three leaflets; in BAV disease, two of the leaflets are fused together, impairing the function of the valve. In many individuals with BAV, the valves eventually will have to be replaced or repaired through heart surgery.
WASHINGTON (Sept. 16, 2019) -- The American College of Cardiology today published its first health policy statement on cardiologist compensation and opportunity equity, recognizing that both are critical to the health and future of the cardiovascular workforce and achieving ACC's mission to transform cardiovascular care and improve heart health.
Washington, DC - September 16, 2019 - Researchers have engineered a plasmid to remove an antibiotic resistance gene from the Enterococcus faecalis bacterium, an accomplishment that could lead to new methods for combating antibiotic resistance. The research is published this week in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.
In vitro, and in mouse models, the engineered plasmid removed the antibiotic resistance gene from E. faecalis. In mouse models, it reduced the abundance of the resistance gene threefold..
Female mice housed alone during adolescence show atypical development of the prefrontal cortex and resort to habitual behavior in adulthood, according to new research published in eNeuro. These findings show how social isolation could lead to an over-reliance on habit-like behaviors that are associated with addiction and obesity.
The adult brain is largely shaped during adolescence, when some connections between brain cells are solidified and others are eliminated. Prior research has established an important role for social experience in this development.
URBANA, Ill. - Corn, soybean, and cotton farmers shudder at the thought of Palmer amaranth invading their fields. The aggressive cousin of waterhemp - itself a formidable adversary - grows extremely rapidly, produces hundreds of thousands of seeds per plant, and is resistant to multiple classes of herbicides, including glyphosate.
How people behave in one situation often tells us how they will act in others. A shy introvert in one place, for example, isn't likely to be the gregarious life of the party in another.
Such is personality -- patterns of behavior within individuals that are reasonably stable over time and contexts. But what creates those patterns of behavior, and why do they persist?
(BOSTON) -- The high-profile case of Jeffrey Epstein has shined a light on the reality that minors are being commercially sexually exploited, and that sexual exploitation can happen in any neighborhood, city, state, or country.
But a new study conducted by researchers at Boston University School of Public Health and Northeastern University, funded by the National Institute of Justice, says there may be a way to prevent this sex trafficking. The study is the first to evaluate the potential impact of a child CSE prevention program in the US.
LAWRENCE -- The tobacco industry has a history of targeting young people in its advertising to attract new customers. As vaping and electronic cigarettes have grown in popularity, advertisers are up to the same old tricks. New research from the University of Kansas shows that not only do those advertising tactics work, but young people also fail to question information touted in those ads.
(Boston) - A new study links changes in the way catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs) are defined and artificially improved hospital performance scores.
Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have found that although hospitals have reported significantly improved CAUTI rates since 2015, the change is not due to improved patient outcomes or initiatives, but instead to a national guideline change in what defines a CAUTI.
CORVALLIS, Ore. - Researchers have identified six corporate actions that, combined with effective public policy and improved governmental regulations, could help large transnational corporations steer environmental stewardship efforts around the world, a new paper suggests.