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GAINESVILLE — Pediatricians usually have about seven minutes to sit face-to-face with patients during a typical visit. It's barely enough time to perform an exam, let alone assess how a child is faring at school or at home.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – About nine in 10 Americans heard the rumor that Barack Obama is a Muslim, making it possibly the most prevalent rumor of the 2008 presidential campaign, according to a nationwide survey.

However, only 22 percent of those surveyed said they actually believed that Obama is a Muslim.

The results can be viewed as both good and bad, according to R. Kelly Garrett, one of the leaders of the survey and assistant professor of communication at Ohio State University.

EAST LANSING, Mich. — A patented Michigan State University process to pretreat corn-crop waste before conversion into ethanol means extra nutrients don't have to be added, cutting the cost of making biofuels from cellulose.

(PHILADELPHIA) Reporting in the journal Nature, researchers led by Emad Alnemri, Ph.D., professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson, discovered a key protein component involved in inflammation.

The protein, AIM2 (absent in melanoma 2), is involved in the detection and reaction to dangerous cytoplasmic DNA that is produced by infection with viral or microbial pathogens, or by tissue damage. AIM2 also appears to be a tumor suppressor, and its inactivation may play a role in the development of cancer, according to Dr. Alnemri.

A study from the University of Bath has found that smokers are twice as likely to kick the habit if they use a support group rather than trying to give up alone.

Montreal, January 22, 2009 – The largest study of its kind on preschoolers has demonstrated that preventive treatment with high doses of inhaled corticosteroids is effective in reducing the severity and duration of asthma attacks triggered by colds. Dr. Francine Ducharme, assistant director of clinical research at the Sainte-Justine Hospital Research Center and a pediatrics professor at the Université de Montréal, led the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

In the year following Hurricane Katrina, the health of survivors 65 and over declined nearly 4 times that of a national sample of older adults not affected by the disaster, according to a study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The August 2005 storm was one of the most powerful and deadliest hurricanes in U.S. history. Hurricane Katrina displaced thousands and severely disrupted access to health care.

Montreal, December 31st, 2008 – Patients who are infected with the latent form of tuberculosis (TB) show no symptoms and are not contagious, yet they pose the biggest challenge when it comes to controlling the disease. The latest study by Dr. Dick Menzies of the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) describes a new potential treatment for this particular form of TB. The paper based on this study was recently published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

In an upcoming issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Yale researchers used newly developed mathematical models to analyze huge amounts of data on physical characteristics such as temperature and salinity in different ocean habitats and metabolic activity in marine micro-organisms.

New Rochelle, NY, January 22, 2009--Biotechnology companies are building on what they have learned about microfluidics techniques over the past decade and are expected to drive this market toward $1.9 billion in three years, reports Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News (GEN); (www.genengnews.com).

After several years of battling recurring infections, the last thing a patient and her doctors ever expected was that the cause of her problems might actually help millions live longer, more active lives. Now, researchers have high hopes because Edward Goetzl and his colleagues from the University of California and The Ohio State University discovered that the patient made a unique antibody to her own T cells, the cells that mediate much of autoimmunity.

Drifting of the large tectonic plates and the superimposed continents is not only powered by the heat-driven convection processes in the Earth's mantle, but rather retroacts on this internal driving processes. In doing so, the continents function as a thermal blanket, which leads to an accumulation of heat underneath, and which in turn can cause the break-up of the super-continents.

PITTSBURGH, Jan. 22 – When anthrax was sent through the U.S. Postal Service in 2001, an overwhelming majority of postal workers elected not to be inoculated with the available vaccine because of confusion and distrust, according to a University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health study. Although the FBI officially closed the case on the attacks this year, lingering suspicion and uncertainty remain, say study authors, which could influence the public's reactions to future emergencies.

Lately, every drought, flood or hurricane which happens in the planet is connected with climatic change, and therefore the interest of society and scientists is getting to know this phenomenon better.

Climatic change is connected at present with the phenomenon of global warming. This is characterized by the increase of carbon dioxide (CO2 gas), which produces the reduction of heat emission to the space and provokes a higher global warming.

INDIANAPOLIS – Patients and their families want physicians who are gifted in diagnosis and treatment and who are caring individuals with the interpersonal skills needed to communicate complex information in stressful circumstances.

A new study in the January 2009 issue of Academic Medicine shows training physicians to be humanistic is feasible and produces measurably better communicators.