Culture

ALAMEDA, Calif. - December 17, 2014 - Penumbra, Inc., the market leader in intra-arterial stroke treatment, announced that an independent study published online today in the New England Journal of Medicine found that intra-arterial stroke treatment, including the company's clot extraction technology, was shown to be significantly more effective than medical management with tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), which is the current standard of care.

SAN FRANCISCO--Of the many weather-related factors that contribute to harmful algal blooms (HABs) in Lake Erie, a new study has identified one as most important: the wind.

Over a 10-year period in Lake Erie, wind speed contributed more consistently to HABs than sunshine or even precipitation, researchers at The Ohio State University and their colleagues found.

The ongoing study is unusual, in that researchers are building the first detailed analyses of how the various environmental factors influence each other--in the context of satellite studies of Lake Erie.

This news release is available in French.

This news release is available in French.

The findings prompt the authors to describe children's cartoons as "rife with death and destruction," with content akin to the "rampant horrors" of popular films for adults given restrictive age ratings.

"Rather than being innocuous and gentler alternatives to typical horror or drama films, children's animated films are, in fact, hotbeds of murder and mayhem" say the study leaders Dr Ian Colman and Dr James Kirkbride.

• American states got tough on impaired driving in the 1980s and 1990s, but restrictions have flat lined.
• A new study looks at associations between levels and types of law-enforcement efforts and prevalence of drinking and driving.
• The number of traffic stops and DUI arrests per capita had the most consistent and significant associations.

Alcohol outlets tend to be concentrated in lower-income areas. Given that alcohol-related problems such as trauma, chronic disease, and suicide occur more frequently in areas with a greater density of alcohol outlets, lower-income populations are exposed to increased risk. This study examines the distribution of rural outlets in the state of Victoria, Australia, finding towns had more outlets of all types where the average income was lower and where the average income in adjacent towns was higher, and that this was consistent with retail market dynamics.

Among patients with lymphoma undergoing a certain type of chemotherapy, receiving the antiviral drug entecavir resulted in a lower incidence of hepatitis B virus (HBV)-related hepatitis and HBV reactivation, compared with the antiviral drug lamivudine, according to a study in the December 17 issue of JAMA.

ANN ARBOR--A national survey of students in U.S. middle schools and high schools shows some important improvements in levels of substance use.

Both alcohol and cigarette use in 2014 are at their lowest points since the study began in 1975. Use of a number of illicit drugs also show declines this year.

For people with asthma or severe allergies, medical devices like inhalers and epinephrine autoinjectors, such as EpiPen, can be lifesaving.

However, a new study by the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston indicates that a majority of patients often do not use these devices correctly, resulting in less effective delivery of these medications and potentially disastrous outcomes.

Eliminating health disparities between races is a goal of many groups and organizations, but a team of sociologists suggests that finding the reasons for the differences in the timing of black and white deaths may be trickier than once thought.

Unauthorized immigrants who previously have been removed from the United States are more than 2.5 times more likely to be rearrested after leaving jail, and are likely to be rearrested much more frequently than those who have never been removed, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

The findings generally support strategies adopted by federal immigration authorities and some law enforcement agencies to focus their immigration enforcement efforts on immigrants who previously have been removed, who are viewed as posing a bigger criminal threat.

INDIANAPOLIS -- In the first real-world trial of the impact of patient-controlled access to electronic medical records, almost half of the patients who participated withheld clinically sensitive information in their medical record from some or all of their health care providers.

PHILADELPHIA - As the main component of connective tissue in the body, fibroblasts are the most common type of cell. Taking advantage of that ready availability, scientists from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, the Wistar Institute, Boston University School of Medicine, and New Jersey Institute of Technology have discovered a way to repurpose fibroblasts into functional melanocytes, the body's pigment-producing cells.

Two studies published in the January issue of Anesthesiology, the official medical journal of the American Society of Anesthesiologists® (ASA®), shed new light on the prevalence of transfusion-related acute lung injury (TRALI) and transfusion-associated circulatory overload (TACO), the number one and two leading causes of blood transfusion-related deaths in the United States. According to researchers, postoperative TRALI is significantly underreported and more common than previously thought, with an overall rate of 1.4 percent.

Most patients don't receive counseling about resuming sexual activity after having a heart attack, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Circulation.

Researchers interviewed 3,501 heart attack patients in 127 hospitals and one month later by telephone in August 2008-January 2012 in the United States and Spain. The patients' median age was 48 years and two-thirds were female.