Culture

SANTA CRUZ, CA--Studies conducted in California and elsewhere provide support for the use of marine reserves as a tool for managing fisheries and protecting marine habitats, according to biologists at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

A recent study in the Gulf of California, for example, confirmed the validity of a key concept behind marine reserves--the idea that offspring produced in a protected area can replenish the stocks of harvested species outside the reserve.

ACCRA, Ghana -- The lives of almost 4 million women, newborns, and children in sub-Saharan Africa could be saved every year if well-established, affordable health care interventions reached 90 percent of families, according to a joint report by the national science academies of seven African countries.

(Washington, DC) Physician bias might be the reason why African Americans are not receiving kidney/pancreas transplants at the same rate as similar patients in other racial groups. Dr. Keith Melancon, director of kidney and pancreas transplantation at Georgetown University Hospital and associate professor of surgery at Georgetown University Medical Center, and colleagues explore this phenomenon in the November issue of the American Journal of Transplantation.

Residents of the U.S. Gulf coast thought they were getting a break this hurricane season until Ida showed up. Today, November 9, Ida is a hurricane and is headed for a landfall in the western Florida Panhandle after midnight. The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-12 captured a look at Ida's extensive clouds this morning, and they stretch from Florida's west coast to eastern Texas. At 8:30 a.m. ET (7:30 CT), showers and thunderstorms had already spread into eastern Texas, Louisiana, southern Mississippi and Alabama and the Florida Panhandle.

The remains of a Minoan-style wall painting, recognizable by a blue background, the first of its kind to be found in Israel, was discovered in the course of the recent excavation season at Tel Kabri. This fresco joins others of Aegean style that have been uncovered during earlier seasons at the Canaanite palace in Kabri. "It was, without doubt, a conscious decision made by the city's rulers who wished to associate with Mediterranean culture and not adopt Syrian and Mesopotamian styles of art like other cities in Canaan did.

Simple computerized alerts can help curb the impulse to prescribe unnecessarily expensive, heavily marketed drugs. A study in the August issue of Journal of General Internal Medicine found that when clinicians received computerized alerts, which compared medication brands, they changed 23.3 percent of prescriptions for four heavily marketed sleep medications to comparable generic equivalents.

Companies that commit fraud can find innovative ways to fudge the numbers, making it hard to tell something is wrong by just looking at their financial statements. But research from North Carolina State University unveils a new warning system that sees through accounting tricks by evaluating things that are easily verifiable, such as the number of employees or the square footage that a company owns. If a company says that its profits are up, but these nonfinancial measures (NFMs) are down, that's a sign something is probably wrong.

People would be willing to pay more for products that carry detailed nutritional information than for the so-called light items. Thus it has been confirmed by researchers from the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) and the Centre for Agro-Food Research and Technology of Aragón (CITA) in a new study on the nutritional labelling of breakfast biscuits.

Reston, Va.—SNM applauds the U.S. House of Representatives for its passage of H.R. 3276—the American Medical Isotopes Production Act of 2009.

"The worldwide isotope shortage has long been adversely affecting patients in the U.S.," said Michael M. Graham, Ph.D., M.D., president of SNM. "This important legislation will bring us one step closer to solving this chronic problem."

The American Medical Isotopes Production Act of 2009 was introduced by Congressman Edward J. Markey (D–MA) in July.

Thursday, Nov. 5—Experts on both sides of the Atlantic applaud President Barack Obama and Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, representing the European Union (EU) Presidency, for establishing a transatlantic task force to address antibiotic resistance, an urgent and growing problem that threatens patient safety and public health worldwide.

Antibiotic over-prescription is promoted by pediatricians' perception of parents' expectations. Research published in the open access journal BMC Pediatrics shows that pediatricians are more likely to inappropriately prescribe antibiotics for respiratory tract infections if they perceived parents were expecting a prescription.

Researchers reporting in BioMed Central's open access journal Conflict and Health found that the discrepancy in media reporting of casualty numbers in the Iraq conflict can potentially misinform the public and contribute to distorted perceptions and gross underestimates of the number of civilians killed in the armed conflict.

Racial discrimination is a major threat to African American women's mental health. It undermines their view of themselves as masters of their own life circumstances and makes them less psychologically resilient and more prone to depression. These findings (1) by Dr. Verna Keith, from Florida State University in the US and her colleagues, are published online in Springer's journal Sex Roles.

COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- An innovative proposal by the Ecuadorian government to protect an untouched, oil rich region of Amazon rainforest is a precedent-setting and potentially economically viable approach, says a team of environmental researchers from the University of Maryland, the World Resources Institute and Save America's Forests.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – One of the first set of studies to examine what tourists and recreation enthusiasts actually think about coral reef ecosystems suggests they are a rare exception to controversies over human use versus environmental conservation – their stunning beauty is so extraordinary that almost everyone wants them protected in perpetuity.

That core belief is often strong enough that if it means people have to be kept out, so be it.