Futurity.org » University of Rochester

Weekend delivery safe for high-risk babies

Emily Boynton-Rochester — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 22:03:39 +0000

U. ROCHESTER (US) — Weekday delivery is no safer for babies born with a birth defect than weekend or evening deliveries, new research shows.

Presented at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine’s annual conference, the study finds that infants with birth defects that were delivered at night or over the weekend fared just as well as those delivered on a weekday.

Online dating dumps the stigma

Susan Hagen-Rochester — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:32:05 +0000

U. ROCHESTER (US) — Online dating has become the second-most-common way for couples to meet, behind only meeting through friends, according to a new analysis of the industry.

The report reviews more than 400 psychology studies and public interest surveys, painting a picture of an industry that, according to one industry estimate, attracted 25 million unique users around the world in April 2011 alone.

Guys, it’s not healthy to be so vain

Diane Swanbrow-Michigan — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:19:54 +0000

U. MICHIGAN (US) — The personality trait narcissism may have an especially negative effect on the health of men, new research shows.

“Narcissistic men may be paying a high price in terms of their physical health, in addition to the psychological cost to their relationships,” says Sara Konrath, a University of Michigan psychologist who co-authored the study published in PLoS ONE.

Odd eclipse reveals ‘Saturn on steroids’

Peter Iglinski-Rochester — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 06:04:11 +0000

U. ROCHESTER (US) — A team of astrophysicists has discovered a Saturn-like ring system in the constellation Centaurus.

Led by Eric Mamajek , assistant professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester, and the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, scientists used data from the international SuperWASP (Wide Angle Search for Planets) and All Sky Automated Survey (ASAS) project to study the light curves of young Sun-like stars in the Scorpius-Centaurus association—the nearest region of recent massive star formation to the Sun.

Imagine yourself sitting in a park on a sunny afternoon and a softball passes between you and the sun. The intensity of light from the sun would appear to weaken for just a moment. Then a bird then flies by, causing the intensity of the sunlight to again weaken—more or less than it did for the baseball, depending on the size of the bird and how long it took to pass. That’s the principle that allowed the researchers to discover a cosmic ring system.

Myths and truths: Pregnancy, weight, and risks

Emily Boynton-Rochester — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 16:31:42 +0000

U. ROCHESTER (US) — Despite excessive caloric intake, many obese women are actually deficient in vitamins vital to a healthy pregnancy.

Together, obesity and pregnancy present a unique set of challenges that women and their doctors must tackle in order to achieve the best possible outcome for mom and baby.

Routine hits may injure teen athlete’s brain

Leslie Orr-Rochester — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 16:01:56 +0000

U. ROCHESTER (US) — Brain scans of high school football and hockey players showed subtle injury after routine hits to the head during normal play.

The research, reported online in the journal Magnetic Resonance Imaging, is preliminary, involving only a small sample of athletes, but raises significant questions about the consequences of the mildest head injury among youths whose brains are still developing, researchers say.

Method weeds out best stem cells for MS

Ellen Goldbaum-Buffalo — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 15:07:49 +0000

U. BUFFALO/ U. ROCHESTER (US) — Scientists have discovered a precise way to isolate the specific stem cells needed to treat multiple sclerosis and a variety of childhood diseases caused by the brain’s inability to make myelin.

Myelin is the crucial fatty material that coats neurons and allows them to signal effectively. The research, reported online in Nature Biotechnology, overcomes an important barrier to using stem cells to treat demyelinating diseases.

Inflammation overload may harm heart

Karen Finney-UC Davis — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 15:19:34 +0000

UC DAVIS (US) — New research about inflammation’s role in heart disease underscores the need to consider a broader range of immune-system factors to find accurate biomarkers, especially in relation to age.

A study published in the journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology shows that systemic inflammation, the immune system’s defense against disease or injury that can contribute to cancer and diabetes, increases with age in people with heart-disease symptoms, but inflammation specific to vascular disease does not.

Lower income raises heart disease risk

Karen Finney-UC Davis — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 15:24:30 +0000

UC DAVIS (US) — People with less education and lower incomes are much more likely to develop heart disease than those who are wealthier or better educated, according to a recent study.

Reported in the journal BMC Cardiovascular Disorders, the outcomes also show the risk persists even with long-term progress in addressing traditional risk factors such as smoking, high blood pressure, and elevated cholesterol.

“Being poor or having less than a high school education can be regarded as an extra risk when assessing a patient’s chances of developing cardiovascular disease,” says lead researcher Peter Franks, a professor of family and community medicine at the University of California, Davis. “People with low socioeconomic status need to have their heart-disease indicators managed more aggressively.”

Hubble movies show galactic traffic jams

David Ruth-Rice — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 15:37:15 +0000

RICE (US) — Movies made using images collected by Hubble Space Telescope over 14 years are forcing astronomers to rethink the late stages of star birth.

Rice University astronomer Patrick Hartigan created the time-lapse movies that offer astronomers their first glimpse of the dynamic behavior of stellar jets, huge torrents of gas and particles that spew from the poles of newborn stars.