One surprising result from this week's presidential election: The red state-blue state divide may have gotten deeper. That’s the conclusion of political scientist Alan Abramowitz of Emory University in Atlanta. His analysis of the returns notes that there were 34 “blowout states” — that is, states where either Barack Obama or John McCain won by at least 10 percent. That’s down from 25 states in both 2000 and 2004. In contrast, only seven states were decided by fewer than five points — down from 12 in 2000 and 11 in 2004. “While there are more blue states, the divide between ... Read More

Ongoing efforts to limit the number of voters in Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin and Nevada — all predicated on the fear of voter fraud and all launched by Republicans — suffered major setbacks this week. The decisions, either by judges or secretaries of state, bring to a close several of the legal battles detailed in the latest compendium of swing-state disputes Miller-McCune.com reported earlier this week, and focus on the right to vote trumping the fear of fraud. In general, Republicans in at least 10 swing states have cited problems with new registrations — including some clearly ... Read More

The best police work usually involves the liberal application of shoe leather, whether the perps are thugs or bugs. That turned out to be the case for one eatery, where "textbook epidemiological process" discovered that recurring food poisoning didn't arise from the food. Since June of this year, an International House of Pancakes restaurant in Amarillo, Texas, has been closed down no fewer than three times with recurrent salmonella infections. Between Father's Day and early July, the restaurant was responsible for 90 reported salmonella infections. Health authorities shut it down the ... Read More

The suicide of a Missouri teenager after online bullying by the parent of a former friend has set off a spate of adult hand-wringing and a few specific laws hoping to prevent the practice. Much like the fear of Internet predators trolling for our youth, the concerns seem based more on lurid anecdote than serious study. New research from two University of California, Los Angeles psychologists, Jaana Juvonen and Elisheva F. Gross, attempts to put some numbers on the frequency of bullying beyond campus. They asked 1,454 students, ranging in age from 12 to 17 years old, from public and ... Read More

A team of researchers at the University of Nottingham led by biologist Tim Phillips came to that conclusion in a paper recently published in the British Journal of Psychology. They surveyed two groups of college students and 170 couples (median age 58), asking questions about what specific qualities they looked for in a mate. In all three studies, women placed significantly greater importance than men on altruistic traits such as “donates blood regularly” or “volunteers to in a local hospital.” (Perhaps an alternative scenario such as “volunteers to participate in ... Read More

The combined world prevalence of age-associated cognitive impairment and cognitive disorders stands at 24 million individuals — and 4.6 million new cases are diagnosed annually. The costs in human suffering and the financial costs of caring for victims of age-related dementia are a staggering $315 billion annually, Alzheimer's Disease International estimated last year. Signs of the disability can manifest as early as age 40, according to Dr. Gary Small, director of the University of California, Los Angeles' Center on Aging. "That's when you begin to see a shrinking of the brain and a ... Read More

Our Michael Haederle suggested awhile back that coffee might be the elixir of life, which frankly struck us as rather obvious given the way it raises us from the dead every morning. Nonetheless, the contention backed up other research, like this look at java and yeast. But even our piece noted that there may be a downside to coffee, including links to miscarriage and benign breast disease. So we're happy to note that a study of 38,432 women age 45 and up who filled out diet surveys from 1992 to 1995 now suggests that caffeine consumption is not associated with overall breast cancer ... Read More