A Kansas State University study has shown that when preparing frozen foods, adolescents are less likely than adults to wash their hands and are more susceptible to cross-contaminating raw foods while cooking. "While half of the adults we observed washed their hands after touching raw chicken, none of the adolescents did," said Casey Jacob, a food safety research assistant at K-State. &qu...

In a development that could have significant ramifications for the nation`s health care system, Baby Boomers may well be entering their 60s suffering far more disabilities than their counterparts did in previous generations, according to a new UCLA study. The findings, researchers say, may be due in part to changing American demographics. ...

Scientists at the University of Adelaide have made a breakthrough that could change the world`s thinking on what light is capable of. ...

Satellite observations and a state-of-the art regional atmospheric model have independently confirmed that the Greenland ice sheet is loosing mass at an accelerating rate, reports a new study in Science. This mass loss is equally distributed between increased iceberg production, driven by acceleration of Greenland`s fast-flowing outlet glaciers, and increased meltwater production at the ice sheet ...

The scalding-hot sea that supposedly covered the early Earth may in fact never have existed, according to a new study by Stanford University researchers who analyzed isotope ratios in 3.4 billion-year-old ocean floor rocks. Their findings suggest that the early ocean was much more temperate and that, as a result, life likely diversified and spread across the globe much sooner in Earth`s history th...

Positive social interactions exist within Drosophila: When in a group, Drosophila flies have better memory than when they are isolated. Thomas Preat`s team at the Laboratoire de Neurobiologie (CNRS / ESPCI ParisTech) has recently highlighted this phenomenon through olfactory memory tests. This work, published in the journal Current Biology on 13 October 2009, has paved the way for new research ave...

An international team of environmental scientists led by the University of Pennsylvania has shown that sea-level rise, at least in North Carolina, is accelerating. Researchers found 20th-century sea-level rise to be three times higher than the rate of sea-level rise during the last 500 years. In addition, this jump appears to occur between 1879 and 1915, a time of industrial change that may provid...

Patients who die in the hospital in the United States are almost five times as likely to have spent part of their last hospital stay in the ICU than patients in England. What`s more, over the age of 85, ICU usage among terminal patients is eight times higher in the U.S. than in England, according to new research from Columbia University that compared the two countries` use of intensive care servic...

The great diversity of male sexual traits, ranging from peacock`s elaborate train to formidable genitalia of male seed beetles, is the result of female choice. But why do females choose among males? In a new study published October 22 in Current Biology, researchers from Uppsala University found no support for the theory that the female choice is connected to "good genes". The great dive...

A report examining the impact of a global biofuels program on greenhouse gas emissions during the 21st century has found that carbon loss stemming from the displacement of food crops and pastures for biofuels crops may be twice as much as the CO2 emissions from land dedicated to biofuels production. The study, led by Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) senior scientist Jerry Melillo, also predicts ...