A new study finds that breast cancer patients who participate in intervention sessions focusing on improving mood, coping effectively, and altering health behaviors live longer than patients who do not receive such psychological support. Published in the December 15, 2008 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the study indicates that reducing the stress that can accompany cancer diagnosis and treatment can have a significant impact on patients' survival.

Researchers at the University of Utah are enrolling people in a new clinical trial that uses a patient's own stem cells to treat ischemic and non-ischemic heart failure.   The one-year Cardiac Repair Cell Treatment of Patients with Dilated Cardiomyopathy (IMPACT-DCM) study will look at the safety of injecting Cardiac Repair Cells (CRC) and their ability to improve heart function.

The temperature might not be the only thing plummeting this winter. Many people also will experience a decrease in their vitamin D levels, which can play a role in heart disease, according to a new review article in Circulation. 

Vitamin D deficiency results in part from reduced exposure to sunlight, which is common during cold weather months when days are shorter and more time is spent indoors. 

"Chronic vitamin D deficiency may be a culprit in heart disease, high blood pressure and metabolic syndrome," said Sue Penckofer, PhD, RN, study author and professor, Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing, Loyola University Chicago. 

A study published today in the online advance edition of The American Journal of Psychiatry for the first time reveals shape differences in the brains of children with ADHD, which could help pinpoint the specific neural circuits involved in the disorder.

Did you go to basic training for the military?  If so, it is a special memory and you remember it vividly but you don't want to repeat it.   On the opposite end of the spectrum, the truly special positive experiences are not something we want to repeat either - we want to keep them as memories.

So most people are unlikely to return to the place of their Honeymoon because they can't repeat it and don't want to diminish the memory.
 
A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research says people tend to treat their memories of previous special experiences as assets to be protected.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more people die from lung cancer than any other cancer type. In fact, according to 2004 data, more people died from lung cancer than breast, prostate and colon cancers combined. 

Smoking is the biggest risk factor for developing lung cancer, even after quitting for long periods of time.   But only 10% of smokers get lung cancer and almost 50% of lung cancer cases involve former smokers.   

Construction of new coal-fired power plants in the United States is in danger of coming to a standstill, partly due to the high cost of the requirement, whether existing or anticipated, to capture all emissions of carbon dioxide, an important greenhouse gas. But an MIT analysis suggests an intermediate step that could get construction moving again, allowing the nation to fend off growing electricity shortages using our most-abundant, least-expensive fuel while also reducing emissions.

Instead of capturing all of its CO2 emissions, plants could capture a significant fraction of those emissions with less costly changes in plant design and operation, the MIT analysis shows.

You wouldn't ordinarily think of soil as a non-renewable resource, but it is.    Healing damage to soil takes geologic time, not human time.    And increasing levels of nitrogen deposition that are associated with industry and agriculture are driving soils toward a toxic level of acidification, reducing plant growth and polluting surface waters, according to a new study published online in Nature Geoscience. 

Oppenheimer: The Tragic Intellect

Charles Thorpe, University of Chicago 2006

For decades, there was a dearth of comprehensive Oppenheimer biographies. As Thomas Powers noted in the New York Review of Books, biographies of other major Manhattan Project figures came out long before adequate Oppenheimer biographies: "Oppenheimer, the truly central figure, seemed to resist the attempt to write his life on the grand scale." That is no longer the case, and a shelf of very good biographies makes it difficult to know where to start reading.

A new approach to calibrating quantum mechanical measurement has been developed with particular applications in optics and super-secure quantum communication.Scientists have used the approach to directly calibrate a detector that can sense the presence of multiple individual photons, it is revealed in research published today in Nature Physics.

Being able to sense the presence of individual photons is an important requirement for the development of future long-distance quantum communication devices and networks. One of the potential applications of this new detector is in devices for secret communications, which could allow information to be exchanged in total security guaranteed by the laws of physics, with no possibility of interception, or eavesdropping.