Retail medical clinics located in pharmacies and other stores primarily attract both insured and uninsured patients who are seeking help for a small group of easy-to-treat illnesses or preventive care but do not otherwise have a regular health care provider, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

Retail medical clinics are typically located in drug stores and other large retail chain stores, such as Target and Wal-Mart, rather than in medical facilities. There are now almost 1,000 retail clinics in the United States and it is estimated there may be 6,000 by 2011.

The RAND Health study is the first to examine the types of patients who use the retail clinics and the health care services delivered by the clinics, which are growing in number and popularity. The findings are published in the September/October of the journal Health Affairs.

More than 1,500 audiocassette tapes taken in 2001 from Osama bin Laden's former residential compound in Qandahar, Afghanistan, are yielding new insights into the radical Islamic militant leader's intellectual development in the years leading up to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Flagg Miller, an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of California, Davis, and the first academic researcher to study the tapes, will present his preliminary observations in a lecture at the Center of Modern Oriental Studies in Berlin on Sept. 18. The first research paper stemming from Miller's study of the tapes will appear in the October issue of the journal Language & Communication.

Women employed in casual and contract jobs are up to ten times more likely to experience unwanted sexual advances than those in permanent full time positions, a University of Melbourne study has found.

The research by Associate Professor Anthony LaMontagne of the McCaughey Centre, VicHealth Centre for the Promotion of Mental Health and Community Wellbeing will be presented at the From Margins to Mainstream Conference: 5th World Conference on the Promotion of Mental Health and the Prevention of Mental and Behavioral Disorders.

Associate Professor LaMontagne's study examined the likelihood of sexual harassment in different types of employment.

Microbes that break down oil and petroleum are more diverse than we thought, suggesting hydrocarbons were used as an energy source early in Earth's history, according to a presentation at the Society for General Microbiology's Autumn meeting.

These microbes can change the composition of oil and natural gas and can even control the release of some greenhouse gases. Understanding the role of microbes in consuming hydrocarbons may therefore help us access their role in the natural control of climate change.

University of Chicago scientists have discovered how to make magnetic sensors capable of operating at the high temperatures that ceramic engines in cars and aircraft of the future will require for higher operating efficiency than today's internal combustion technology.

The key to fabricating the sensors involves slightly diluting samples of a well-known semiconductor material, called indium antimonide, which is valued for its purity. Chicago's Thomas Rosenbaum and associate Jingshi Hu, now of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have published their formula in the September issue of Nature Materials.

University of Chicago physicist Thomas Rosenbaum, with the helium dilution refrigerator in his laboratory, where he observes the quantum behavior of materials chilled to temperatures approaching absolute zero. (Photo: Dan Dry)

A narrow region on chromosome 15 contains genetic variations strongly associated with familial lung cancer, says a study conducted by scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and other institutions in the United States and the United Kingdom.

The researchers found a more than five times higher risk of lung cancer for people who have both a family history of the disease and these genetic variations. The risk was not affected by whether the study participants smoked or didn't smoke.