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Boston, MA—Researchers from Boston University's Slone Epidemiology Center have found that approximately one in ten U.S. children uses one or more cough and cold medications during a given week. These findings appear in the August issue of the journal Pediatrics.

WASHINGTON -- Growing interest in publicly funded programs for young children has drawn attention to whether and how Head Start and other early childhood programs should be asked to prove their worth. Congress asked the National Research Council for guidance on how to identify important outcomes for children from birth to age 5 and how best to assess them in preschools, child care, and other early childhood programs.

Researchers are collecting vast amounts of diverse genomic data with ever-increasing speed, but effective ways to visualize these data in an integrated manner have lagged behind the ability to generate them. To address this growing need, researchers at the Broad Institute have developed the Integrative Genomics Viewer (IGV), a novel and freely available visualization tool that helps users simultaneously integrate and analyze different types of genomic data, and gives them the flexibility to zoom in on a specific genomic region of interest or to pan out for a broad, whole genome view.

Batavia, Ill.--Scientists from the CDF and DZero collaborations at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermilab have combined Tevatron data from the two experiments to advance the quest for the long-sought Higgs boson. Their results indicate that Fermilab researchers have for the first time excluded, with 95 percent probability, a mass for the Higgs of 170 GeV. This value lies near the middle of the possible mass range for the particle established by earlier experiments.

Most rock paintings and rock carvings or petroglyphs were created by ancient and prehistoric societies. Archaeologists have long used them to gain clues to the way of life of such peoples. Certain rock frescos − such as the renowned Lascaux and Chauvet cave paintings or the petroglyphs of Scandinavia and North America − have already yielded substantial information on our ancestors' daily lives. However, for other regions of the world like Latin America studies are still fragmentary.

The UK's ISIS Second Target Station Project moved a major step closer to completion today when the first neutrons were created in the ISIS Second Target Station. After five years of planning and construction, the first neutrons were detected by the Inter instrument at 1308 BST. ISIS, the world-renowned neutron facility at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, is operated by the Science and Technology Facilities Council.

New York, August 4, 2008 – Maternal death rates have remained constant in the United States for many decades. Are there any improvements in health care that could reduce these rates further? In a study published in the July 2008 issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, researchers examined all maternal deaths in nearly 1.5 million birth records from the last 6 years to look for possible keys to saving more mothers.

An independent link between sleep apnea and mortality has been discovered by a group of Australian researchers, suggesting the prevention and treatment of this condition should be a higher priority for government bodies working to improve community health.

The study conducted by the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research in Sydney found moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) was associated with 33% mortality over 14 years compared to 7.7% mortality in people with no sleep apnea.

BOSTON — Women diagnosed with breast cancer shoulder the emotional burden of disclosing their diagnosis to loved ones, managing the feelings of others at precisely the time when they need support themselves, according to research to be presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA).

Most of the world's plant species rely on animals to transfer their pollen to other plants. The undisputed queen of these animal pollinators is the bee, made up of about 30,000 species worldwide, whose daily flights aid in the reproduction of more than half of the world's flowering plants. In recent years, however, an unprecedented and unexplained decline in bee populations across the U.S. and Europe has placed the health of ecosystems and the sustainability of crops in peril.

(COLUMBUS, Ohio) - If it's at the Olympic Games or at the neighborhood pool, diving is one of the fastest growing sports in this country*. Every day millions of people do it* and every four years during the Olympics, billions of people watch it. So it might surprise you that researchers are just now delving into the dangers of diving boards.

A new study from researchers at the American Cancer Society finds many cancer patients use complementary and alternative methods, most often prayer, relaxation, supplements, meditation, and massage. Meanwhile, the use of other methods, such as biofeedback, homeopathy, and acupressure, are relatively uncommon. The study, appearing in the American Cancer Society peer review journal CANCER, also finds women, younger survivors, whites, individuals with higher income, and those with more education were more likely to use complementary methods (CM).

Positive findings of a safety study involving children and a highly touted botanical extract (COLD-fX) show promise for its future development for kids as a Canadian cold and flu remedy. The results appear in the August, 2008 issue of Pediatrics – the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

WASHINGTON — Inspired by the use of microarray chips that look for gene combinations, psychologists are using "pattern array" software to spot movements in rats that might help them predict diseases such as Lou Gehrig's syndrome.

A report in the August issue of Behavioral Neuroscience, published by the American Psychological Association, describes how this novel use of data mining may enable investigators to test therapies to delay or even prevent disease, starting with hereditary forms.

Low-dose growth hormone treatment reduced abdominal fat deposits and improved blood pressure and triglyceride levels in a group of patients with HIV lipodystrophy, a condition involving the redistribution of fat and other metabolic changes in patients receiving combination drug therapy for HIV infection. However, growth hormone treatment appeared to increase blood glucose levels, particularly in those already exhibiting glucose intolerance. The study from researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) appears in the Aug..