Eurek Alert News - Science Business

(<i>Centre for Addiction and Mental Health</i>) Mental illness is associated with more lost work days than any other chronic condition, costing the Canadian economy $51 billion annually in lost productivity. In the first study of its kind, researchers from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health have calculated the actual cost of mental health leave and found that on average it's double the cost of a leave for a physical illness.

(<i>The Gerontological Society of America</i>) The Association for Gerontology in Higher Education -- the educational branch of The Gerontological Society of America -- has chosen Edward F. Ansello, Ph.D., of Virginia Commonwealth University as the newest recipient of the Clark Tibbitts Award.

(<i>The Gerontological Society of America</i>) The Association for Gerontology in Higher Education -- the educational branch of the Gerontological Society of America -- has chosen Dena Shenk, Ph.D., of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte as the newest recipient of the Hiram J. Friedsam Mentorship Award.

(<i>American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics</i>) The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Foundation is pleased to announce that a team from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, Calif., has won first prize in the AIAA Foundation's annual Undergraduate Team Aircraft Design Competition.

(<i>American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics</i>) The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Foundation is pleased to announce that the team from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Ga., has won first prize in the AIAA Foundation's annual Undergraduate Team Space Design Competition.

(<i>American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics</i>) The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Foundation is pleased to announce that Lauren Fitzpatrick from the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kan., has won first prize in the AIAA Foundation's annual Undergraduate Individual Team Aircraft Design Competition.

(<i>American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics</i>) The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Foundation is pleased to announce that a team from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Va., has won first prize in the Foundation's annual Undergraduate Space Transportation Design Competition.

(<i>National Science Foundation</i>) Introducing cutting-edge science topics can be a challenge, due to the constantly evolving nature of scientific research. But an innovative new science education program aims to meet that challenge when educating students, teachers and the public about global climate change and its impacts.

(<i>University of Kansas</i>) The insufficiency of the programs is striking because about 63 percent of Americans with disabilities are unemployed.

(<i>Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres</i>) Prof. Dr. Hans-Werner Schock, department head and spokesman for Solar Energy Research at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, received the prestigious "Becquerel Prize" at the 25th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition in Valencia. The EU Commission honored the HZB scientist for his life's work in the field of photovoltaics.

(<i>Society for Experimental Biology</i>) Gebisa Ejeta, winner of the world food prize 2009, will open the International Food Security and Safety Meeting to be held in Lancaster, UK, Sept. 13-15, 2010. Speakers from Europe, China and Africa will be represented by scientists, biotechnologists, social scientists, ethics and policy professionals. Integrated and interdisciplinary solutions will be recommended to tackle present and future food security challenges.

(<i>DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory</i>) Exemplary efforts to "go green" at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have resulted in a 2010 Federal Energy & Water Management Award and a 2010 Department of Energy Management Award in recognition of the lab's Sustainable Campus Initiative.

(<i>Northwestern University</i>) Tweet this, Ashton Kutcher, Lady Gaga and Britney Spears. Just because you have a ton of followers on Twitter doesn't necessarily mean you're among the most influential people in the Twitterverse, according to researchers from Northwestern University.

(<i>American Chemical Society</i>) News media and others interested in the chemical sciences are invited to join the next in a series of American Chemical Society webinars, focusing on how to navigate the National Science Foundation's small business funding programs. Scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 23, from 2-3 p.m. EDT, the free ACS webinar will feature Josephine Yuen, Ph.D., NSF program director, speaking on "Demystifying SBIR/STTR Grant Applications and Processes for Entrepreneurs and Small Businesses."

(<i>University of Edinburgh</i>) Fresh insight into how plants slow their growth in cold weather could help scientists develop crops suited to cooler environments.

(<i>Association for Psychological Science</i>) As children in Western cultures grow, they learn to place numbers on a mental number line, with smaller numbers to the left and spaced further apart than the larger numbers on the right. Then the number line changes to become more linear, with small and large numbers the same distance apart. Children whose number line has made this change are better at remembering numbers, according to a new study published in the journal Psychological Science.

(<i>Kennedy Krieger Institute</i>) Early signs of Alzheimer's disease can be difficult to distinguish from the normal aging process in any older adult. For adults with Down syndrome, who are particularly vulnerable to Alzheimer's disease, it is even more so. To address crucial gaps in knowledge about Alzheimer's disease in adults with Down syndrome, the Kennedy Krieger Institute has been awarded an $8.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

(<i>InHealth: The Institute for Health Technology Studies</i>) The Institute for Health Technology Studies (InHealth) has awarded two follow-on grants totaling more than $830,000 to research teams at Northwestern University and Duke University.

(<i>Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council</i>) New research into how music conveys emotion could benefit the treatment of depression and the management of physical pain.Using an innovative combination of music psychology and leading-edge audio engineering the project is looking in more detail than ever before at how music conveys emotion.

(<i>The Storch Murphy Group</i>) Terumo Medical Corporation, a US-based subsidiary of Terumo Corporation, today announced the first US patient implant in the Occlusive/Stenotic Peripheral artery REvascularization StudY (OSPREY), which will evaluate the safety and efficacy of its MISAGO Peripheral Self-expanding Stent System for use in the superficial femoral artery. The procedure was performed at the Bradenton Cardiology Center in Bradenton, Fla.The OSPREY clinical trial will simultaneously enroll patients in the US and Japan.

(<i>Institut Pasteur Korea</i>) Researchers at the Pasteur Institutes in Seoul and Paris, and at IPBS in Toulouse, have identified 10 factors that help Mycobacterium tuberculosis avoid destruction inside host cell phagosomes. Two of the genes identified by high-throughput visual screening of 11,000 mutant mycobacteria are involved in the synthesis of acyltrehalose-containing glycolipids. These glycolipids prevent maturation of the host cell phagosome and may be a target for novel antimycobacterial drugs. The work is published on Sept. 9, 2010, in PLoS Pathogens.

(<i>Burness Communications</i>) Greenhouse gas emissions caused by livestock operations in tropical countries -- a major contributor to climate change -- could be cut significantly by changing diets and breeds and improving degraded lands, according to a new study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. And as an added bonus, scientists found the small changes in production practices could provide a big payoff by providing poor farmers with up to $1.3 billion annually in payments for carbon offsets.

(<i>McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health</i>) The lure of greater profits elsewhere in the world may divert firms in developing countries from the creation and distribution of affordable drugs, vaccines and diagnostics for illnesses of local concern, undermining the health prospects of millions of poor people, experts warn in an article to be published by the journal Nature Biotechnology.

(<i>University of Cambridge</i>) An innovative grouping of conservation scientists and practitioners have come together to advocate a fundamental shift in the way we view biodiversity. In their paper, which was published today in the journal Science, they argue that unless people recognize the link between their consumption choices and biodiversity loss, the diversity of life on Earth will continue to decline.

(<i>International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis</i>) Due to increasing life-spans and improving health many populations are "aging" more slowly than conventional measures indicate. As published in Science (Sept. 10), IIASA scientists have developed new measures of aging that take disability and longevity into account. Their results give policymakers new tools to better determine the economic cost of an aging population and set more appropriate retirement ages.