news 2012

New MIT center examines education and its lifelong effects. Education has long been perceived as a great leveler in the United States, providing opportunities throughout society. But at a time of economic struggle, millions of people are wondering if the country's schools can still provide a platform for success.

New technique may help severely damaged nerves regrow and restore function Engineers at the University of Sheffield have developed a method of assisting nerves damaged by traumatic accidents to repair naturally, which could improve the chances of restoring sensation and movement in injured limbs. In a collaborative study with Laser Zentrum Hannover (Germany) published today (23 April 2012) in the journal Biofabrication , the team describes a new method for making medical devices called nerve guidance conduits or NGCs.

New research has analysed the mood of Twitter users in the UK and detected various changes in the mood of the public. In particular, the researchers observed a significant increase in negative mood, anger and fear, coinciding with the announcement of spending cuts and last summer's riots together with a possibly calming effect during the royal wedding.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.-Researchers from the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research are conducting an innovative field experiment designed to improve the lives of older, lower-income people. "We're adapting a program called Masterpiece Living for use in affordable housing communities," said U-M psychologist Toni Antonucci, the principal investigator of the project.

UCLA scientists studying the ways in which skin cancer becomes resistant to drug treatment have discovered that a second mutation found in the tumors of patients with BRAF-mutated metastatic melanoma does not contribute to resistance to BRAF inhibitor drugs, a finding that runs counter to what they expected.

A new study published in Conservation Letters aims to measure whether parks and reserves in the tropics succeed in protecting forests Just as deforestation rates in remote protected areas should not be compared with deforestation rates from more accessible and lower altitude unprotected areas, it is also critical to control for government-mediated access in the form of regulations governing unprotected lands.

In Switzerland, there are currently around 12,500 foundations, 76,000 associations and 10,000 cooperatives.

Research into the effectiveness of staff counselling reveals that workplace support can have a striking and sustained effect for employees with workplace or personal difficulties. Staff leave counselling with a far greater sense of well-being and much more able to cope with the demands of their working lives." —Jill Collins A study into the effectiveness of staff counselling at the University of Cambridge has revealed that such services can make a significant and lasting improvement to the lives of people with work-related stress and other problems.

Results of the international RN4CAST study into links between nursing workforce issues and patient outcomes in 13 countries have been published in the British Medical Journal today. The study in England, which was led by researchers at the National Nursing Research Unit (NNRU) at King's College London and the University of Southampton, reveals that the levels of "burnout" and job dissatisfaction experienced by English nurses are some of the worst in Europe.

A new study concludes that Ofsted grades are too broad to provide a detailed measure of quality in nurseries and preschools. The study carried out by the University of Oxford and A+ Education for the charity, Daycare Trust, found that Ofsted reports are best used alongside other existing quality assessments.

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are a lifelong set of developmental disorders that often demand significant resources of time and money from families. New research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the Center for Autism Research at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) now reveals that a wide range of negative parental employment and earnings outcomes are associated with childhood ASD, and specifically have a major impact on a mother's ability to contribute to the overall income of the family.

Installing a gun cabinet dramatically reduces unlocked guns and ammunition in the home, according to a study in rural Alaska villages where the residents are primarily Alaska Native people. David Grossman, Group Health Research Institute senior investigator and UW professor of health services, led the research published in the American Journal of Public Health March 8.

Even though a large clinical study demonstrated that radiation has limited benefit in treating breast cancer in some older women, there was little change in the use of radiation among older women in the Medicare program, Yale School of Medicine researchers report in the March Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Sussex showcases academic research online Months of work culminated this week with the launch of Sussex Research Online (SRO), which showcases the University's research to the external world and contains a record of all research 'outputs' by academics at Sussex. SRO contains information about peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, reports, PhD theses and other publications - providing direct online access to the full text where possible.

On the health front, the poor often have at least two things going against them: a lack of insurance and chronic illnesses, of which diabetes is among the most common. The federal Affordable Care Act would expand the capacity of the nation's 8,000 community health centers to provide care for low-income, largely minority patients — from the current 20 million to about 40 million by 2015.

Breast cancer stem cells, thought to be the sole source of tumor recurrence, are known to be resistant to radiation therapy and don't respond well to chemotherapy. Now, researchers with the UCLA Department of Radiation Oncology at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center report for the first time that radiation treatment, despite killing half of all tumor cells during every treatment, transforms other cancer cells into treatment-resistant breast cancer stem cells.

Imperial College London Media Release Patients' ratings of hospitals tally with objective measures of the hospital's performance, according to an independent study published today in Archives of Internal Medicine . Since 2008, patients have been able to post comments on and rate hospitals using the NHS Choices website, in the same way as they might rate a hotel on Tripadvisor.

An assistant professor at Penn State has created a new statistical model that may enable fingerprint evidence to withstand greater scrutiny in court. Currently, some fingerprints that could be key pieces of evidence in court are not being considered because of shortcomings in the way this evidence is reported.

University of Warwick and National Trust : Research into possible Woodchester wild cat finds no cat DNA on deer Extensive DNA tests by experts at the University of Warwick on two deer carcasses found in Gloucestershire have not found any indication of a big cat presence. The National Trust asked the University to test a roe deer carcass found near Woodchester Park, Gloucestershire in early January after examination of the wounds led to speculation that it may have been killed by a big cat.

Here is a news release issued today by the journal Nature: The author of an upcoming Nature paper about H5N1 argues in a Nature Comment article today that research into deadly pathogenic viruses must continue if pandemics are to be prevented. Yoshihiro Kawaoka suggests, after reviewing many factors, that pursuing studies of highly pathogenic viruses must be done with urgency.