There are worrisome racial, economic, educational, and gender gaps in awareness about the lifesaving vaccine for human papilloma virus (HPV), a Yale Cancer Center study has found. The study is being presented at the 2013 annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Chicago.
HPV is a primarily sexually transmitted virus most widely known for causing cervical cancer, but it can also cause anal cancer, certain oral cancers, and cancers of the sexual organs of both women and men. (more…)
With the 2015 sesquicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s death approaching, interest is rising, and with new tools, UA researchers have turned their attention to one of the last remaining mysteries about what reportedly was the largest traditional funeral in American history – the train’s color.
A trove of information exists about Abraham Lincoln’s funeral, which drew millions of mourners during a two-week railway procession across the Northern states.
But until now, the precise color of the president’s railcar had been lost to history. (more…)
People living near asphalt pavement sealed with coal tar have an elevated risk of cancer, according to a study in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. Much of this calculated excess risk results from exposures in children, age six or younger, to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from the sealant.
“The increased cancer risk associated with coal-tar-sealed asphalt (CSA) likely affects a large number of people in the U.S. Our results indicate that the presence of coal-tar-based pavement sealants is associated with significant increases in estimated excess lifetime cancer risk for nearby residents,” said E. Spencer Williams, Ph.D., principal author of the study and Baylor University assistant research scientist at the Center for Reservoir and Aquatic Systems Research in Baylor’s College of Arts & Sciences. (more…)
Technologically valuable ultrastable glasses can be produced in days or hours with properties corresponding to those that have been aged for thousands of years, computational and laboratory studies have confirmed.
Aging makes for higher quality glassy materials because they have slowly evolved toward a more stable molecular condition. This evolution can take thousands or millions of years, but manufacturers must work faster. Armed with a better understanding of how glasses age and evolve, researchers at the universities of Chicago and Wisconsin-Madison raise the possibility of designing a new class of materials at the molecular level via a vapor-deposition process. (more…)
Five Russian legislators visited the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy recently to learn about American elections and democratic institutions from Chicago Harris faculty and students.
The Chicago Harris stop on Dec. 3 kicked off a weeklong trip for the delegates to Washington D.C. and Chicago as part of the congressionally sponsored Open World Program. The goal was to expose the legislators, who are all municipal council deputies in Moscow, to American best practices in local governance. (more…)
A new study published by University of Chicago researchers challenges the notion that the force of an exploding star prompted the formation of the solar system.
In this study, published online last month in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, authors Haolan Tang and Nicolas Dauphas found the radioactive isotope iron 60 — the telltale sign of an exploding star—low in abundance and well mixed in solar system material. As cosmochemists, they look for remnants of stellar explosions in meteorites to help determine the conditions under which the solar system formed. (more…)
People are able to detect, within a split second, if a hurtful action they are witnessing is intentional or accidental, new research on the brain at the University of Chicago shows.
The study is the first to explain how the brain is hard-wired to recognize when another person is being intentionally harmed. It also provides new insights into how such recognition is connected with emotion and morality, said lead author Jean Decety, the Irving B. Harris Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at UChicago. (more…)
One of the most notable outcomes of the Nov. 6 election was the record number of women voted into Congress, including 20 women who will occupy seats in the U.S. Senate.
Christopher Berry, associate professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, recently discussed the effects of the increase in female U.S. senators. Berry co-authored a 2011 study that found congresswomen consistently outperform their male counterparts on several measures of job performance.
What implications will the increase of female representation have for the U.S. Senate?
Potentially of great interest to the constituents of the new female senators is our finding that they consistently bring home more federal projects and federal aid than their male counterparts. When you think about disasters like Hurricane Sandy, the ability to bring home federal aid for rebuilding efforts is really important. It is going to be good for their constituents and the states they represent. (more…)
