Body

So many acts in our daily lives – refusing that second slice of cake, walking past the store with the latest gadgets, working on your tax forms when you'd rather watch TV – seem to boil down to one essential ingredient: self-control. Self-control is what enables us to maintain healthy habits, save for a rainy day, and get important things done.

But what is self-control, really? And how does it work?

New Rochelle, NY, September 12, 2012—The life disruption and losses experienced by young adults battling advanced cancer can result in a unique burden of grief that is too often overlooked, as described in an article in Journal of Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology (JAYAO), (http://www.liebertpub.com/JAYAO) a multidisciplinary peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.

New Rochelle, NY, September 12, 2012—New evidence-based guidelines have been released for the diagnosis and treatment of hypothyroidism, a complex disease caused by an underactive thyroid gland that cannot produce enough thyroid hormone. These updated clinical recommendations are published in Thyroid (http://www.liebertpub.com/thy), a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers (http://www.liebertpub.com).

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – You may think you have your food all to yourself, but you're actually sharing it with a vast community of microbes waiting within your digestive tract. A new study from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine reveals some gut microbes increase the absorption of dietary fats, allowing the host organism to extract more calories from the same amount of food.

Baltimore, MD —You may think you have dinner all to yourself, but you're actually sharing it with a vast community of microbes waiting within your digestive tract. A new study from a team including Carnegie's Steve Farber and Juliana Carten reveals that some gut microbes increase the absorption of dietary fats, allowing the host organism to extract more calories from the same amount of food.

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, MASS. – In a study that analyzed relationships between air quality and unemployment levels, a Tufts University researcher has developed a new statistical model that retrospectively estimates air pollution exposure for previous time periods where such information is not available.

JEJU, REPUBLIC OF KOREA (September 12, 2012) – A remote park in northwest Bolivia may be the most biologically diverse place on earth, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which helped put together a comprehensive list of species found there. The announcement was released at the IUCN World Conservation Congress, an international gathering of conservationists meeting through Sept. 13 in Jeju, South Korea.

BOSTON, MA—Headache? Back pain? At the first sign of pain, you might reach for a pain-relieving medicine to sooth your bodily woes.

Analgesics are the most frequently used medications in the United States and are commonly used to treat a variety of medical conditions.

But although popping a pill may make the pain go away, it may do some damage to your ears.

Helicoverpa armigera: a global pest

Larvae of the cotton bollworm (Helicoverpa armigera) are dreaded pests all over the world. They have a very wide host range: About 200 different plant species are known as potential food for the voracious insect. The herbivore attacks crops in Africa, South Europe, India, Central Asia, New Zealand, and Australia. Nearly 30% of all globally used insecticides − Bt toxins as well as pyrethroids − are applied to protect cotton and other crops against the bollworm.

The key player in a movement challenging improper use of DNA testing and other elements of forensic science is the topic of a compelling cover story in this week's edition of Chemical & Engineering News. The story in the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society (ACS) — the world's largest scientific society — features the Innocence Project, which, in the last two decades, has helped free nearly 300 wrongfully convicted prisoners.

In an advance toward development of a nasal spray that protects against infection with influenza and spread of the disease, scientists are reporting identification of a substance that activates the first-line defense system against infection inside the nose. They describe effects of a synthetic form of a natural substance found in bacterial cell walls in ACS' journal Molecular Pharmaceutics.

People in the United States took more prescription drugs than ever last year, with the number of prescriptions increasing from 3.99 billion (with a cost of $308.6 billion) in 2010 to 4.02 billion (with a cost of $319.9 billion) in 2011. Those numbers and others appear in an annual profile of top prescription medicines published in the journal ACS Chemical Neuroscience.

Historic findings of human remains- including a man with apparent battle wounds and curvature of the spine - have been revealed by an archaeological team from the University of Leicester.

The University of Leicester has been leading the archaeological search for the burial place of King Richard III with Leicester City Council, in association with the Richard III Society. The dig, now in its third week, has yielded dramatic findings of human remains which the University will now subject to rigorous laboratory tests.

An important breakthrough could help in the fight against myotonic dystrophy. The discovery, recently published in the prestigious scientific journal Cell, results from an international collaboration between researchers at the IRCM, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of Southern California and Illumina. Their findings could lead to a better understanding of the causes of this disease.

Businesses perform a large share of their research and development in a small number of geographic areas, two of the largest being the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland area and the New York-Newark-Bridgeport area. In these two areas alone, designated as combined statistical areas (CSAs) by the Office of Management and Budget, companies performed at least $29.3 billion of R&D, according to a recent National Science Foundation report.