Futurity.org » Cornell University

Hungry shoppers buy more junk food

Stacey Shackford-Cornell — Tue, 07 May 2013 20:02:43 +0000

CORNELL (US) — Skipping meals before going to the grocery store can sabotage your shopping—and your diet—according to new research.

Even short-term food deprivation not only increases overall grocery shopping, but also leads shoppers to buy 31 percent more high-calorie foods, according to a study published online in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Hundreds of possible ways to starve cancer

Michelle Falling-Columbia — Mon, 06 May 2013 20:04:41 +0000

COLUMBIA U. (US) — An analysis of gene expression from 22 types of tumors has come up with hundreds of potential drug targets that could cut off cancer’s fuel supply.

Scientists say the results should ramp up research into drugs that interfere with cancer metabolism, a field that dominated cancer research in the early 20th century and has recently undergone a renaissance.

Baby immune cells are born ready to fight

Carly Hodes-Cornell — Mon, 06 May 2013 19:25:01 +0000

CORNELL (US) — Found in newborns, small populations of preprogrammed immune cells can fight specific pathogens that they have never encountered.

The findings, say the researchers, have the potential to revolutionize how and when people are immunized. The study, published in the Journal of Immunology, demonstrates a way to grow these cells, potentially transforming our approach to preventing infectious disease.

When first exposed to a new pathogen, the immune system takes up to a week to effectively respond, and up to a month to make specialized memory cells that remember how to fight it. The next time a body is exposed, these memory cells take care of it within hours.

Watch squishy creatures evolve to run

Syl Kacapyr-Cornell — Fri, 03 May 2013 13:34:53 +0000

CORNELL (US) — A computer algorithm shows virtual “softbots” evolving muscle-like features and teaching themselves to walk.

The team incorporated concepts from developmental biology and how nature builds complex animals—from jellyfish to jaguars. The result is an array of bizarre, simulated robots that evolve a diverse series of gaits and gallops.

Happy heads may get better sleep

Karene Booker-Cornell — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:41:50 +0000

CORNELL (US) — When a person’s happiness swings widely in reaction to the good and bad things that happen during the day, sleep can suffer.

Researchers analyzed data from 100 middle-aged participants in a longitudinal study of midlife in the United States that included telephone interviews about participants’ daily experience as well as subjective and objective measures of sleeping habits.

Published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine, the study looked at the overall levels of positive emotion that the participants experienced in their lives—those associated with more stable personality traits, as well as daily fluctuations in positive emotions in reaction to daily events.

Tiny meteoroids pummel Saturn’s rings

Susan Kelley-Cornell — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:20:22 +0000

CORNELL (US) — Saturn takes a beating from small meteoroids around a half-inch to several yards in size that break into streams of rubble and crash into its rings, according to images taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.

Scientists were able to see the tracks left by nine of these objects in 2005, 2009 and 2012. The Saturnian equinox in summer 2009 was an especially fruitful time to see the debris left by impacts because the shallow sun angle on the rings caused the clouds of debris to look bright against the darkened rings in Cassini’s pictures.

Massive star factory in early universe

Brian Bell-Caltech — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 10:47:40 +0000

CALTECH (US) — Astronomers have found a star-generating galaxy that existed billions of years earlier than expected possible, churning out 2,000 times more stars than the Milky Way.

The first galaxies were small, then eventually merged together to form the behemoths we see in the present universe. Those smaller galaxies produced stars at a modest rate; only later—when the universe was a couple of billion years old—did the vast majority of larger galaxies begin to form and accumulate enough gas and dust to become prolific star factories.

No ‘quick fix’ to reduce hospital readmissions

Sara LaJeunesse-Penn State — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 07:52:53 +0000

PENN STATE (US) — Medical providers need to create networks of collaboration in order to lower patients’ risk of being readmitted to the hospital, researchers say.

But achieving widespread reductions in preventable hospital readmissions among Medicare beneficiaries could take longer than many health care professionals originally anticipated, according to a study that appears in the journal Population Health Management.

Frequent moves tough on poor children

Susan Kelley-Cornell — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 20:04:59 +0000

CORNELL (US) — Children who move three or more times before they turn five have more behavioral problems than their peers—but only if they are from low-income families, a new study reports.

These children have more attention problems, anxiety, or depression and are more aggressive or hyperactive at age 5 than those who had moved once, twice, or not at all.

Bumble bee loss threatens food security

Ken Branson-Rutgers — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 14:27:07 +0000

RUTGERS (US) — Wild pollinators are just as important, and often more efficient, at pollinating crops than domestic honey bee colonies, but bumble bee colonies are vanishing.

“This will be a surprise to the agricultural establishment,” says Rachael Winfree, professor of ecology, evolution, and natural resources in Rutgers’ School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, who was involved in the two new studies.