Posts in category: Uncategorized

What is shyness? Research has shown that shyness is characterized by fear and nervousness in response to social novelty and/or social evaluation. Shyness can manifest on behavioral, affective, and physiological levels, but little is known about how these components cluster. Longstanding theories note that shyness may be conceptualized as a trait that is relatively stable across development, which is described as temperamental shyness.

A new study from The University of Toledo suggests early exposure to a common class of insecticides called pyrethroids may increase the risk of autism and other developmental disorders, even at levels currently recognized as safe by federal regulators.

A trio of neurologists at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has found through a study of the data in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) that the prevalence of stroke in the U.S. over the past 20 years has remained stable. Wells Andres, Aaron Rothstein and Holly Elser describe their analysis in the journal JAMA Neurology.

Happiness can’t be bought, but nor does it depend mostly on one’s mindset, as many happiness surveys would suggest, according to a recent study by Cornell psychology researchers.

Pancreatic cancers are deadly and hard to treat, in part because they are so often detected at an advanced stage; overall five-year survival rates are about 11%. Two separate labs at Boston Children’s Hospital took out-of-the-box approaches to this difficult cancer, and both uncovered some very promising leads.

In a study published online in the Schizophrenia Bulletin, researchers from Dr. Wang Wei’s lab at the Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Dr. Wang Jijun’ team at Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, demonstrated spatial and temporal abnormalities of spontaneous fixational saccades and their correlates with positive and cognitive symptoms in schizophrenia, suggesting that fixational saccades are a promising and easily obtainable biomarker for cognitive and positive symptoms and for complementary diagnosis in schizophrenia.

An iPad app developed at Northwestern Medicine that helps measure specific aspects of cognitive, motor, sensory and emotional function in five minutes or less is now available for doctors to screen people ages 3 to 85 years and beyond for a wide range of neurological diseases and syndromes.

A new class of immunotherapy shows promising results for fighting the most aggressive form of skin cancer.

A group of researchers led by the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, has illustrated the mechanistic pathway for PTEN-deficient breast cancer and successfully tested a method of countering the downstream effects of immune system evasion by tumors.

A research team led by Professor Leung Wai-keung from Department of Medicine, School of Clinical Medicine, LKS Faculty of Medicine, the University of Hong Kong (HKUMed) and the Baylor College of Medicine of the United States found that Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection around the world has been steadily declining over the past four decades, thus offering a comprehensive, updated epidemiology of H. pylori infection. The study has been published in The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology.