Parents who engage in the age-old tradition of picture-book reading are not only encouraging early reading development in their children but are also teaching their toddlers about the world around them, according to a study in the November issue of Developmental Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association (APA). This finding shows that interactions with life-like color pictures can aid in children?s learning.
MIT and Cambridge University researchers will unveil the conceptual design for a silent, environmentally friendly passenger plane at a press conference Monday, Nov. 6, at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London.
People who experience a pounding heart, sweaty palms or dizziness — even if the cause is something as mundane as stress, exercise or caffeine — are more likely to develop a clinical case of anxiety or panic disorder, according to a Florida State University researcher in Tallahassee, Fla.
To help satisfy consumer demand for more natural food products, researchers at Texas A&M University are investigating dried plums as a meat preservative. They are finding that dried plums, when pureed, have a good antioxidant capacity.
Since 2000, five women in North America who had medically induced abortions died from toxic shock caused by a Clostridium sordellii infection. This has led some people to question the safety of the combination of the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol frequently used in MIA procedures.
Ear infections are among the most common diseases seen in pediatric practice. They have generally been considered bacterial diseases and are therefore usually treated with antibiotics. New research, published in the Dec. 15 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases and currently available online, provides evidence that viruses are found in a great many ear infection cases and may complicate treatment.
Scientists at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC have identified a protein that is critical to the development of inflammation during lung infection in patients with cystic fibrosis. The identification of this protein, called interleukin-23, is an important finding that gives researchers a specific target for developing new therapies.
An electrical imbalance caused by a malfunctioning gene triggers long QT syndrome, a potentially fatal heart rhythm disorder. A mutation in the gene Caveolin-3 can disrupt the heart’s electrical-muscular impulses and increase the risk of sudden cardiac death.
A toxin that can make bacterial infections turn deadly is also found in higher plants, researchers at UC Davis, the Marine Biology Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass. and the University of Nebraska have found. Lipid A, the core of endotoxin, is located in the chloroplasts, structures that carry out photosynthesis within plant cells.
In an effort to protect a large grassland bird from possible extinction, the government of Cambodia has recently moved to set aside more than 100 square miles of habitat for the Bengal florican, a bird now classified as endangered, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society.