Culture

WASHINGTON, D.C. —While the debate over prescription drug advertising persists, a new study released online in the American Journal of Public Health offers guidelines for improving drug ads in order to minimize potential harm and maximize benefits. The study reveals that while there are some benefits from prescription drug direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA), there are significant risks that are magnified by the prominence of DTCA.

AMES, Iowa – James Oliver picked up an Xbox game controller, looked up to a video screen and used the device's buttons and joystick to fly through a patient's chest cavity for an up-close look at the bottom of the heart.

NEW YORK, NY (November 11, 2009) – Autism Speaks is encouraged by yesterday's decision of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) to include vaccine research studies in the objectives of the updated Strategic Plan for Autism Research. The new language, approved unanimously, calls for studies to determine if there are sub-populations that are more susceptible to environmental exposures such as immune challenges related to naturally occurring infections, vaccines or underlying immune problems.

CAMBRIDGE, MA – November 11, 2009 – Aileron Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company leading the development of a new class of drugs called Stapled Peptides, announced today that its collaborators, James E. Bradner, MD of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, and Gregory L.

A Kansas State University study has shown that when preparing frozen foods, adolescents are less likely than adults to wash their hands and are more susceptible to cross-contaminating raw foods while cooking.

Engineers at the University of Leeds have developed a simple technology which can be used in existing chemical reactors to ensure "right first time" drug crystal formation.

Ensuring drug crystals are formed correctly is crucial to their efficacy and the efficiency of pharmaceutical manufacturers' operations. Using self-assembled monolayers, the team has been able to show that crystals form into their desired product form with the correct shape and particle structure, without the usual problems of polymorphism which results in huge losses to the pharmaceutical sector each year.

November 11, 2009 (Oakland, Calif.) – High levels of workplace exposure to Bisphenol-A may increase the risk of reduced sexual function in men, according to a Kaiser Permanente study appearing in the journal Human Reproduction, published by Oxford Journals. [1]

Georgia Tech City and Regional Planning Professor Brian Stone publishes a paper in the December edition of Environmental Science and Technology that suggests policymakers need to address the influence of global deforestation and urbanization on climate change, in addition to greenhouse gas emissions.

DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA (11 November 2009)–As African nations are poised to undergo the highest increase in the rate of tobacco use among developing countries, nearly 90 percent of people on the continent remain without meaningful protection from secondhand smoke, according to a new report released at a regional cancer conference today.

This release is available in http://chinese..org/zh/emb_releases/2009-11/jaaj-110509.php">Chinese.

Nearly 50 percent of women surveyed indicate they experience pain symptoms 2 to 3 years after breast cancer treatment, with women who were younger or who received supplemental radiation therapy more likely to have pain, according to a study in the November 11 issue of JAMA.

Almost a quarter of heart failure patients with Medicare are back in the hospital within a month after discharge, researchers report in Circulation: Heart Failure, a journal of the American Heart Association.

Each year, from 2004 through 2006, more than a half million Medicare recipients over age 65 went to the hospital for heart failure and were discharged alive. And each year, about 23 percent returned to the hospital within 30 days – signaling a need to improve care, researchers said. Readmission rates for all causes were almost identical all three years.

The American health care sector accounts for nearly a tenth of the country's carbon dioxide emissions, according to a first-of-its-kind calculation of health care's carbon footprint.

Published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, University of Chicago researchers used expenditures from different parts of the health care sector to measure the industry's potential effect upon global warming through the release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---People who did not earn a high school diploma could be more likely to get H1N1 and the vaccine might be less effective in them compared to those who earned a diploma, new research shows.

Sensors, communications devices and imaging equipment that use a prism and a special form of light -- a surface plasmon-polariton -- may incorporate multiple channels or redundant applications if manufacturers use sculptured thin films.