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Over-the-Counter Eye Drops Raise Concern Over Antibiotic Resistance


ScienceDaily
Sat, 28 Nov 2009 01:00 UTC
The use of antibiotic eye drops for conjunctivitis has increased by almost half since they became available over the counter at chemists in 2005, data obtained by Oxford University researchers has shown.

This is despite the fact that evidence from clinical trials from around the same time showed the eye drops to have minimal benefit.

The findings, published in the British Journal of General Practice, have implications for further decisions on over-the-counter availability of antibiotics, as it is a widely accepted priority to reduce antibiotic use substantially to limit bacteria acquiring resistance to the drugs.

'It's very important that antibiotics aren't used where they're not needed,' says Dr Peter Rose of the University of Oxford, who led the research. 'We've shown that selling eye drops over the counter for conjunctivitis has resulted in greater use at the same time as the evidence showed they have little benefit.'
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Talking to Ourselves: How Consumers Navigate Choices and Inner Conflict


ScienceDaily
Sat, 28 Nov 2009 00:00 UTC
From simple decisions like "Should I eat this brownie?" to bigger questions such as "Should my next car be a hybrid?" consumers are involved in an inner dialogue that reflects thoughts and perspectives of their different selves, according to the authors of a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Shalini Bahl (iAM Business Consulting) and George R. Milne (University of Massachusetts) studied the multiple perspectives that exist within consumers and explored the ways they navigate inconsistent preferences to make consumption decisions.

The authors conducted a study combining in-depth interviews, multi-dimensional scaling, and metaphors to identify some of the voices that engage consumers' minds. They used "dialogic self theory," which differentiates between the "Meta-self" and multiple selves. According to the authors, multiple selves have unique perspectives and speak from different positions with relatively independent voices, while the Meta-self reflects a distanced neutral perspective.

"In our analysis of relationships between two selves with different worldviews and consumption preferences, we discovered a unique relationship in which one self offers a non-judgmental acceptance of another self's opposing views and behavior, and in doing so brings peace and equanimity in a situation involving opposing preferences," the authors write.
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Family

Should Dads be in the Delivery Room?

Clare Murphy
BBC News
Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:59 UTC
Image
Would it have been better if he wasn't there?
It was once imparted to the father over the phone, yet now it's men themselves who often tell their exhausted partner the sex of the child she has just delivered. But could men be more of a hindrance than a help in the delivery room?

French obstetrician Michel Odent says yes, and even blames fathers for an increasing rate of births by Caesarean section.

At a debate hosted this week by the Royal College of Midwives, Mr Odent will argue against what he dubs "the masculinisation of the birth environment".

The presence of an anxious male partner in the labour room makes the woman tense and slows her production of the hormone oxytocin, which aids the process of labour, so the French doctor contends.

This, he says, makes her much more likely to end up on the operating table having an emergency Caesarean section.

"Having been involved for more than 50 years in childbirths in homes and hospitals in France, England and Africa, the best environment I know for an easy birth is when there is nobody around the woman in labour apart from a silent, low-profile and experienced midwife," he says.
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Brains Benefit From Multilingualism


ScienceDaily
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 01:00 UTC
For a considerable time already there has been discussion within scientific circles about whether knowing and using multiple languages could possibly have positive effects on the human brain and thinking. There have been a number of international studies on the subject, which indicate that the ability to use more than one language brings an individual a considerable advantage.

The report of the research team appointed by the European Commission, "The Contribution of Multilingualism to Creativity," presents the first known macro analysis based on the available evidence, which has been conducted by searching through several studies and giving particular attention on recent research on the brain.

David Marsh, specialized planner at the Continuing Professional Development Centre of Jyväskylä University, who coordinated the international research team behind the study, says that especially the research conducted within neurosciences offers an increasing amount of strong evidence of versatile knowledge of languages being beneficial for the usage of an individual's brain.
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Family

"Too Fat to Be a Princess?" Young Girls Worry About Body Image, Study Shows


ScienceDaily
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 02:00 UTC
Even before they start school, many young girls worry that they are fat. But a new study suggests watching a movie starring a stereotypically thin and beautiful princess may not increase children's anxieties.

Nearly half of the 3- to 6-year-old girls in a study by University of Central Florida psychology professor Stacey Tantleff-Dunn and doctoral student Sharon Hayes said they worry about being fat. About one-third would change a physical attribute, such as their weight or hair color.

The number of girls worried about being fat at such a young age concerns Tantleff-Dunn because of the potential implications later in life. Studies have shown that young girls worried about their body image are more likely to suffer from eating disorders when they are older.

The encouraging news for parents is that taking their young daughters to see the new Disney film The Princess and the Frog isn't likely to influence how they perceive their bodies.
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Light Sabers

Flashback Are power and compassion mutually exclusive?


e!Science News
Wed, 17 Dec 2008 09:23 UTC
The fact that many cultures emphasize the concept of "noblesse oblige" (the idea that with great power and prestige come responsibilities) suggests that power may diminish a tendency to help others. Psychologist Gerben A. van Kleef (University of Amsterdam) and his colleagues from University of California, Berkeley, examined how power influences emotional reactions to the suffering of others. A group of undergraduates completed questionnaires about their personal sense of power, which identified them to the researchers as either being high-power or low-power. The students were then randomly paired up and had to tell their partner about an event which had caused them emotional suffering and pain. Their partners then rated their emotions after hearing the story. In addition, the researchers were interested in seeing if there were physical differences in the way high-power people and low-power people responded to others' suffering; specifically they wanted to test if high-powered individuals would exhibit greater autonomic emotion regulation [or respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) reactivity]. When we are faced with psychological stress, our RSA reactivity increases, resulting in a lower heart rate and a calmed, relaxed feeling. To measure RSA reactivity and heart rates, all of the participants were connected to electrocardiogram (ECG) machines during the experiment.
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Chalkboard

A Wiring Diagram in the Brain for Depression

David Dobbs
Scientific American
Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:25 UTC
Researchers pinpoint a crucial crossroads for brain communication and a target for a radical depression treatment

When Helen Mayberg started curing depression by stimulating a previously unknown neural junction box in a brain area called Brod­mann's area 25 - discovered through 20 years of dogged research - people asked her where she was going to look next. Her reaction was, "What do you mean, Where am I going to look next? I'm going to look more closely here!"
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Sherlock

Scientists Discover Emotion-Like Behavior in Fruit Flies


Xinhua
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 07:37 UTC
U.S. scientists have uncovered evidence of a primitive emotion-like behavior in the fruit fly, and their finding may facilitate studies of the relationship between a corrective medicine and a learning disability.

The evidence, published by researchers with the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in the December issue of the journal Neuron, may be relevant to the relationship between the neuro-transmitter dopamine and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Caltech researchers said that the brain of the fruit fly Drosophila contains only about 20,000 neurons, or nerve cells, and has long been considered enough for the studies of the genetic basis of such behavior as learning, memory, courtship and metabolism otherwise known as circadian rhythm.

But they are not yet sure whether the Drosophila brain could also be used to study the genetic basis of "emotional" behavior.
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A Timely Touch Transforms Speech Perception

Bruce Bower
Science News
Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:34 UTC
Air puffs on the hand or neck influence people's ability to hear certain spoken sounds.

People listen with their skin, not just their ears. Air puffs delivered to volunteers' hands or necks at critical times alter their ability, for better or worse, to hear certain speech sounds, a new study finds.

Tactile and auditory information, as well as other sensory inputs, interact in the brain to foster speech perception, propose linguists Bryan Gick and Donald Derrick, both of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

In many languages, speakers expel a small burst of air to make aspirated sounds. In English, for example, aspiration distinguishes ta from da and pa from ba.

Volunteers were more likely to identify aspirated syllables correctly when they heard those syllables while receiving slight, inaudible air puffs to the skin, Gick and Derrick report in the Nov. 26 Nature. Air puffs enhanced detection of aspirated ta and pa sounds and increased the likelihood of mishearing non-aspirated da and ba sounds as their aspirated counterparts, the researchers say.
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Cells Defend Themselves from Viruses, Bacteria With Armor of Protein Errors


ScienceDaily
Wed, 25 Nov 2009 03:00 UTC
When cells are confronted with an invading virus or bacteria or exposed to an irritating chemical, they protect themselves by going off their DNA recipe and inserting the wrong amino acid into new proteins to defend them against damage, scientists have discovered.

These "regulated errors" comprise a novel non-genetic mechanism by which cells can rapidly make important proteins more resistant to attack when stressed, said Tao Pan, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Chicago. A team of 18 scientists from the University of Chicago and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease led by Pan and Jonathan Yewdell published the findings November 25 in the journal Nature.

"This mechanism allows every protein to get some protection," Pan said. "The genetic code is considered untouchable, but this is a non-genetic strategy used in cells to create a bodyguard for proteins."
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