Culture

A recent comparison of proposed national alcohol policies in Lesotho, Malawi, Uganda, and Botswana shows that the drinks industry has assumed a significant and detrimental role in designing national alcohol policies in Sub-Saharan Africa. The policy drafts point to the alcohol industry's preferred version of a national alcohol policy, which includes letting the industry regulate its own marketing activities.

WASHINGTON DC, Dec. 14, 2009—New research showing that thrill-seeking teenagers are especially susceptible to fruit-flavored cigarettes is in line with the recent ban on the sale of flavored cigarettes by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in September 2009. According to the FDA, the ban, authorized by the new Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, is part of a national effort by the FDA to reduce smoking, which is the leading preventable cause of death in America.

The well-worn notion that patients in the United States have unfettered access to the most expensive cancer drugs while the United Kingdom's nationalized health care system regularly denies access to some high-cost treatments needs rethinking, a team of bioethicists and health policy experts says in a report out today.

A new study from Children's Hospital Boston's Division of Emergency Medicine has found that holiday decorations, particularly glass ornaments, are one more safety hazard parents must consider during the season. A review of records from Children's Emergency Department revealed an average of five ornament-related injuries per year; more than half of these injuries involve a child eating fragments of these ornaments, including batteries and pieces of glass.

Adults who used an electronic lock-out system to reduce their television time by half did not change their calorie intake but did expend more energy over a three-week period, according to a report in the December 14/28 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Injecting the corticosteroid triamcinolone into the eye may slow the progression of diabetic retinopathy, a complication of diabetes that can cause vision loss and blindness, according to a report in the December issue of Archives of Ophthalmology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

As the national discussion of health care focuses on costs, a new study from North Carolina State University shows that it might be more accurate to think of health care spending as an investment that can spur economic growth. The study also shows that government projections of health care costs and financing may be unduly pessimistic.

Your ability to resist that tempting cookie depends on how a big a threat you perceive it to be, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

In real estate, it's location, location, location. And when it comes to why girls and women shy away from careers in computer science, a key reason is environment, environment, environment.

The stereotype of computer scientists as nerds who stay up all night coding and have no social life may be driving women away from the field, according to a new study published this month. This stereotype can be brought to mind based only on the appearance of the environment in a classroom or an office.

LOS ANGELES—December 14, 2009—Picture the following hypothetical scenario: A trolley is headed toward five helpless victims. The trolley can be redirected so that only one person's life is at stake. Psychologists and philosophers have been using moral dilemmas like this for years asking, would you redirect the train? Is it morally acceptable to do this? Experts usually switch up the details to see how different sub-scenarios affect moral judgment.

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- A recent study, published in the December issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings, demonstrates new survival data for the blood disorder myelofibrosis. This retrospective study is the largest ever conducted in young patients with primary myelofibrosis.

Myelofibrosis is a serious disorder that disrupts the body's normal production of blood cells. The result is extensive scarring in the bone marrow, leading to severe anemia, weakness, fatigue and often, an enlarged spleen and liver.

Fictional secret agent Angus MacGyver knew that tough situations demand ingenuity. Jessica Lundquist takes a similar approach to studying snowfall. The University of Washington assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering uses dime-sized temperature sensors, first developed for the refrigerated food industry, and tennis balls. In summer months she attaches the sensors to tennis balls that are weighted with gravel, and uses a dog-ball launcher to propel the devices high into alpine trees where they will record winter temperatures.

Ethanol, often promoted as a clean-burning, renewable fuel that could help wean the nation from oil, would likely worsen health problems caused by ozone, compared with gasoline, especially in winter, according to a new study led by Stanford researchers.

A new study released Monday, Dec. 14, in Washington, D.C., criticizes the nation's food and beverage industry for failing to shift their marketing efforts aimed at children. The report said television advertising continues to contribute to epidemic levels of obesity, despite industry promises of reform.

Only about half of American children and teenagers who have certain mental disorders receive professional services, according to a nationally representative survey funded in part by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). The survey also provides a comprehensive look at the prevalence of common mental disorders.