Tech

PORTLAND, Ore. — African-American women's beliefs about depression and depression care are consistently and systematically influenced by racism, according to a new study conducted at Oregon Health & Science University. The results are published online in the American Journal of Public Health.

Boston, MA - Caregivers who participated in a program where attendees discuss medical cases that were complex for psychosocial and emotional reasons were more likely to be attentive to the psychosocial and emotional aspects of patient care. The program also enhanced their beliefs about the importance of empathy.

EAST LANSING, Mich. — During his unprecedented expedition into the heart of the Amazon, Michigan State University geographer Bob Walker discovered surprising evidence that many of the Brazilian government's efforts to protect the environment are working.

As expected, Walker and two fellow scientists – the first research team to travel a 700-mile stretch of the so-called Transamazon Highway in the western Amazon basin – confirmed the existence of illegal logging and gold-mining operations that threaten further damage to the world's largest rainforest.

Since the recent ban on mephedrone, many so-called "legal substitutes" available on the internet are in fact banned cathinones (chemically related to amphetamines) and just as risky, warn experts in a letter to this week's BMJ.

One such product is Energy 1 (NRG-1), also advertised as naphyrone (naphthylpyrovalerone, O-2482), write Simon Brandt and colleagues. These products are offered as legal substitutes for the recently criminalised "legal highs," the mephedrone derivatives.

Specialist medical training programmes should retain some flexibility to help trainee doctors make the right career choices, according to a study published on bmj.com today.

Some UK medical graduates choose a specialty as soon as they qualify and others after a few years of postgraduate work. But changes to postgraduate medical training mean that junior doctors will generally have to make choices sooner than in the past.

Whales produce upcalls, sometimes called contact calls, when they are alone or in the process of joining with other whales. An upcall begins low and rises in pitch. It is the most frequent call produced by right whales.

Parks and her colleagues, Mark Johnson and Peter L. Tyack, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Douglas Nowacek, Duke University, looked at short-term modifications of calling behavior of individual North Atlantic right whales in varying environmental noise situations. They report their results in today's (July 6) issue of Biology Letters.

Star Trek fans will remember "tractor beams," lasers that allowed the Starship Enterprise to trap and move objects. Tel Aviv University is now turning this science fiction into science fact -- on a nano scale.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – An incidental discovery in a wood products lab at Oregon State University has produced a new pressure-sensitive adhesive that may revolutionize the tape industry – an environmentally benign product that works very well and costs much less than existing adhesives based on petrochemicals.

The new adhesive can be produced from a range of vegetable oils, and may find applications for duct tape, packaging tape, stick-on notes, labels, even postage stamps – almost any type of product requiring a pressure-sensitive adhesive.

AMES, Iowa – Changing climate could affect the diversity of plants and animals, and we can get a glimpse of what this may look like by studying the effects of drought in a relatively pristine ecosystem, according to an Iowa State University researcher.

Diane Debinski has been studying the meadows in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem of the Rocky Mountains since 1992. She has found that if the area's climate becomes drier as the earth's temperature climbs, it could lead to a change in the types of plants and animals that live there.

PITTSBURGH—AquaLux 3D, a new projection technology developed at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, can target light onto and between individual water droplets, enabling text, video and other moving or still images to be displayed on multiple layers of falling water.

Every picture tells a story, but how do you know that a digital photo has not been manipulated to change the tale being told? A new approach to adding an encrypted watermark to digital images allows the an image to be validated against a pass key, according to research published in the International Journal of Signal and Imaging Systems Engineering.

AUGUSTA, Ga. - Robots that revolutionized gynecologic and urologic surgery in the past decade now offer the option of removing at least a portion of their diseased thyroid gland without the hallmark neck incision, researchers said.