Newswise

Car Talk, U of Utah Launch Driver Distraction Web Site

NPR’s Car Talk guys, Tom and Ray Magliozzi, teamed up with Univesity of Utah psychologist David Strayer -- an expert on how cell phones impair drivers -- to launch the Driver Distraction Center at cartalk.com/distraction.

Gene is Linked to Lung Cancer Development in Never Smokers

A five-center collaborative study that scanned the genomes of thousands of “never smokers” diagnosed with lung cancer as well as healthy never smokers has found a gene they say could be responsible for a significant number of those cancers.

Spying on a Cellular Director in the Cutting Room

Like a film director cutting out extraneous footage to create a blockbuster, the cellular machine called the spliceosome snips out unwanted stretches of genetic material and joins the remaining pieces to fashion a template for protein production.

Researchers Discover Two New Ways to Kill TB

Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found two novel ways of killing the bacteria that cause tuberculosis (TB), a disease responsible for an estimated two million deaths each year.

Sleep Deprivation Influences Drug Use in Teens’ Social Networks

Recent studies have shown that behaviors such as happiness, obesity, smoking and altruism are “contagious” within adult social networks. In other words, your behavior not only influences your friends, but also their friends and so on. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego and Harvard University have taken this a step farther and found that the spread of one behavior in social networks influences the spread of another behavior, adolescent drug use.

“Know Your Family’s Autoimmune Quotient (AQ)” Campaign Highlights National Autoimmune Diseases Awareness Month

In honor of the designation of March as National Autoimmune Disease Awareness Month by the U.S. Senate on March 4, 2010, the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association (AARDA) wants to help you learn your family’s AQ. AQ is a play on IQ that stands for Autoimmune Quotient. It’s about knowing how likely you or a loved one is to develop an autoimmune disease, based on the prevalence of these diseases and your family history.

Treating Blood Infections Tops Annual Hospital Cost Increases

The hospital costs for treating septicemia increased by an average of nearly 12 percent each year from 1997 to 2007, increasing from $4.1 billion in 1997 to $12.3 billion in 2007.