Brain

TORONTO, ON. - Psychologists from the University of Toronto have developed a personality inventory that can predict who will excel in academic and creative domains, even when respondents are trying hard to fake their answers.

This week undergraduate and graduate students in an advanced computer security course at Rice University in Houston are learning hands-on just how easy it is to wreak havoc on computer software used in today's voting machines.

As part of his advanced computer science class, Rice University Associate Professor and Director of Rice's Computer Security Lab Dan Wallach tests his students in a unique real-life experiment: They are instructed to do their very best to rig a voting machine in the classroom.

Here's how the experiment works:

About two-thirds of children with sleep-disordered breathing (SDB)— snoring or obstructive sleep apnea (OSA)— have some degree of cognitive deficit, but the severity of the cognitive deficit has been notoriously difficult to correlate to the severity of the SDB, suggesting that other important issues may be at play, or that the right factors were simply not being measured.

The current system of publishing medical and scientific research provides "a distorted view of the reality of scientific data that are generated in the laboratory and clinic," says a team of researchers in this week's PLoS Medicine.

In their Essay, Neal Young (National Institutes of Health, USA), John Ioannidis (Tufts University School of Medicine, USA and University of Ioannina School of Medicine, Greece), and Omar Al-Ubaydli (George Mason University, USA) apply principles from the field of economics to present evidence consistent with a distortion.

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Michigan State University plant scientists have discovered another piece of the genetic puzzle that controls how plants respond to high temperatures. That may allow plant breeders to create new varieties of crops that flourish in warmer, drier climates.

Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers have developed a new prenatal blood test that accurately detected Down syndrome and two other serious chromosomal defects in a small study of 18 pregnant women. If confirmed in larger trials, they say, the test would offer a safer and faster alternative to invasive prenatal tests such as amniocentesis that pose a small risk of miscarriage.

Traumatic brain injury is common amongst homeless people and is associated with poorer health, found a study of more than 900 homeless men and women in Toronto http://www.cmaj.ca/press/pg779.pdf. Health problems include an increased risk of seizures, mental health problems, drug problems, and poorer physical and mental health status.

ST. PAUL, Minn. – Cerebral microbleeds, which are small bleeds within the brain, appear to be more common in African-Americans than in Caucasians, increasing the likelihood of having a stroke, according to a study published in the October 7, 2008, issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. These types of brain lesions can be an important indicator for stroke.

ST. PAUL, Minn. – People who occasionally forget an appointment or a friend's name may have a loss of brain volume, even though they don't have memory deficits on regular tests of memory or dementia, according to a study published in the October 7, 2008, issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Washington, DC − Small, clinically silent areas of bleeding in the brain appear to be more common in black versus white stroke patients hospitalized for new brain bleeds, say researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center. These findings may help explain the higher risk of hemorrhagic stroke among the black population, especially in those who are medically underserved.

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers have found that treatment with stimulant drugs does not increase and appears to significantly decrease the risk that girls with ADHD will begin smoking cigarettes or using alcohol or drugs. Their report in the October Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine parallels the findings of several earlier studies in boys, which needed to be confirmed in girls.

About 44 percent of individuals who had bipolar disorder as children continue to have manic episodes as young adults, according to a report in the October issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. This rate, along with the severity of the disease at young ages, strongly suggest that bipolar disorder can be continuous from childhood to adulthood, the authors note.

Magnetic resonance brain imaging reveals that patients with generalized social phobia respond differently than others to negative comments about themselves, according to a report in the October issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

As soon as children are old enough to interact socially, some become entrenched in chronic and increasing patterns of victimization by their peers, according to a report in the October issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Children who are aggressive in infancy and are from families with harsh parenting styles and insufficient income appear more likely to be consistently victimized.

New research by the University of Warwick reveals that many credit card customers become fixated on the level of minimum payments given on credit card bills. The mere presence of a minimum payment is enough to reduce the actual amount many people choose to pay on their bills, leading to further interest payments.