Culture

Having some cardiologists away from the hospital attending national cardiology meetings did not appear to negatively affect Medicare patients admitted for heart conditions, according to a report published online by JAMA Internal Medicine.

Thousands of cardiologists take time off work each year to attend these meetings but how that might affect patients was unknown.

A new study links physical violence against women by male partners to a disruption of a key steroid hormone that opens the door potentially to a variety of negative health effects.

The study by the University of Oregon and the Oregon Social Learning Center looked at daily fluctuations of cortisol levels in men and women. Cortisol was drawn from saliva samples of 122 couples during on-site assessments and four times a day -- upon waking up, 30 minutes later, in mid to late afternoon and at bedtime -- over four consecutive days.

How do people in a social network behave? How are opinions, decisions and behaviors of individuals influenced by their online networks? Can the application of math help answer these questions? 'The way in which information, decisions, and behaviors spread through a network is a fundamental social phenomenon, and the past several decades have shown that it is a phenomenon that can be studied using rich mathematical models,' says Flavio Chierichetti who co-authored a paper that studies online behavior, published this month in the SIAM Journal on Computing.

New research has revealed that men who are disabled and from an ethnic minority are significantly more likely to do jobs traditionally associated with women.

The work, led by the University of Exeter Business School, analyzed the workforce across the lowest grade in a very large FTSE company, focusing on the lowest paid, low skilled and often part-time jobs.

The study found:

A new study is the first to show that insomnia symptoms mediate the relationship between alcohol use and suicide risk, and that this mediation is moderated by gender. The study suggests that the targeted assessment and treatment of specific sleep problems may reduce the risk of suicide among those who use alcohol.

Experts have long theorized that having a cluster of firms within a given industry helps a region's economy grow. Now a study co-authored by an MIT professor shows empirically that clusters of almost all kinds help drive overall economic growth in multiple ways, from job creation and development of intellectual property to the formation of new industries.

Gift exchanges can reveal how people think about others, what they value and enjoy, and how they build and maintain relationships. Researchers are exploring various aspects of gift-giving and receiving, such as how givers choose gifts, how gifts are used by recipients, and how gifts impact the relationship between givers and receivers.

Challenges of "picky" recipients

A previously unknown mathematical property has been found to be behind one of nature's greatest mysteries - how ecosystems survive.

Found in nature and common to all ecosystems the property, Trophic Coherence, is a measure of how plant and animal life interact within the food web of each ecosystem - providing scientists with the first ever mathematical understanding of their architecture and how food webs are able to grow larger while also becoming more stable.

The editors of the journal Science have chosen their favorite science stories of the year and their top-10 list for 2014 appears in the December 19th issue.

Internet addiction, an impulse-control problem marked by an inability to inhibit Internet use, can adversely affect a person's life, including their health and interpersonal relationships. The prevalence of Internet addiction varies among regions around the world, as shown by data from more than 89,000 individuals in 31 countries analyzed for a study published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

The ability of some breathalyzers widely sold to the UK public to detect potentially unsafe levels of breath alcohol for driving, varies considerably, reveals research published in the online journal BMJ Open.

The findings call into question the regulatory process for approving these sorts of devices for personal use, say the researchers, particularly as false reassurance about a person's safety to drive could have potentially catastrophic consequences.

Bethesda, MD (Dec. 19, 2014) -- A new formulation of oral budesonide suspension, a steroid-based treatment, is safe and effective in treating pediatric patients with eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE), according to a new study in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology. Eosinophilic esophagitis is a chronic immune system disease caused by a buildup of white blood cells in the lining of the esophagus. This build up, which is a reaction to food, allergens or acid reflux, can inflame or injure esophageal tissue.

The memory and walking speeds of adults who have lost all of their teeth decline more rapidly than in those who still have some of their own teeth, finds new UCL research.

The study, published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, looked at 3,166 adults aged 60 or over from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) and compared their performance in tests of memory and walking speed. The results showed that the people with none of their own teeth performed approximately 10% worse in both memory and walking speed tests than the people with teeth.

Almost half of teen drivers killed on US roads in the past few years were driving vehicles that were 11 or more years old, and often lacking key safety features, reveals research published online in Injury Prevention.

Parents, who are usually the ones stumping up for a car, could be putting their children's lives at risk by focusing on cost, warn the researchers.

Prostaglandin analogue eye drops, the most commonly prescribed treatment for glaucoma, can greatly reduce risk of vision loss in people with open angle glaucoma (OAG), one of the leading causes of blindness, according to the first placebo-controlled trial to assess their vision-preserving effect published in The Lancet.