Culture

MAYWOOD, Il. - Medical schools have an ethical obligation to change admission policies in order to accept applications from undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers, according to an article in the December, 2014 issue of the journal Academic Medicine.

The first scientific evidence of frankincense being used in Roman burial rites in Britain has been uncovered by a team of archaeological scientists led by the University of Bradford. The findings - published today in the Journal of Archaeological Science - prove that, even while the Roman Empire was in decline, these precious substances were being transported to its furthest northern outpost.

Vienna, Austria - 04 December 2014: Non-ergot derived dopamine agonists used to treat Parkinson's disease may be safe for the heart, according to preliminary research presented at EuroEcho-Imaging 2014 by Dr Hilal Erken Pamukcu, cardiologist at Ankara Diskapi Education and Research Hospital in Turkey.

EuroEcho-Imaging is the annual meeting of the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI), a registered branch of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), and is held 3-6 December in Vienna, Austria.

The longer surgery lasts the more prone patients appear to be to develop blood clots (venous thromboembolisms, VTE), according to a report published online by JAMA Surgery.

The association between longer surgical procedures and death, including VTE, is widely accepted but it has yet to be quantitatively addressed. More than 500,000 hospitalizations and 100,000 deaths are associated each year with VTEs. Examining the link between VTE and surgical time could allow for more informed medical and surgical decisions, according to the study background.

ROSEMONT, Ill.--Compression fractures in the spine due to osteoporosis, a common condition causing progressive bone loss and increased fracture risk, are especially common in older women. A new study appearing in the December 3rd issue of the Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery (JBJS) found that patients who wore a brace as treatment for a spinal compression fracture had comparable outcomes in terms of pain, function and healing when compared to patients who did not wear a brace.

The more time you spend getting to and from work, the less likely you are to be satisfied with life, says a new Waterloo study.

Published in World Leisure Journal, the research reveals exactly why commuting is such a contentment killer--and surprisingly, traffic isn't the only reason to blame.

"We found that the longer it takes someone to get to work, the lower their satisfaction with life in general," says Margo Hilbrecht, a professor in Applied Health Sciences and the associate director of research for the Canadian Index of Wellbeing.

Researchers at North Carolina State University have for the first time mapped human disease-causing pathogens, dividing the world into a number of regions where similar diseases occur.

The findings show that the world can be separated into seven regions for vectored human diseases - diseases that are spread by pests, like mosquito-borne malaria - and five regions for non-vectored diseases, like cholera.

People in the country's unhappiest communities spend about a quarter of the month so far down in the dumps that it can harm their productivity, according to economists.

Do you consider yourself a conscientious person? Then sign up for a fixed-rate mortgage. Neurotic? You'll probably opt for home ownership over renting.

With good planning, it is possible to promote the reuse of construction and demolition waste and thereby both conserve the environment and save on material costs. In the future, it will be even more important to assess how buildings can reasonably be repaired or demolished into parts, together with how the remaining service life of the parts can be utilized in new applications. The best method is to implement demolition planning already as a component of construction design.

Coral reefs provide a range of benefits, such as food, opportunities for income and education, but not everyone has the same access to them, according to a new study conducted by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE) at James Cook University.

The researchers examined how people from 28 fishing communities in Madagascar, Kenya, Tanzania and Seychelles benefit from the marine environment.

Coffee, apple juice, and vitamin C: things that people ingest every day are experimental material for chemist Eva-Maria Felix. The doctoral student in the research group of Professor Wolfgang Ensinger in the Department of Material Analysis is working on making nanotubes of gold. She precipitates the precious metal from an aqueous solution onto a pretreated film with many tiny channels. The metal on the walls of the channels adopts the shape of nanotubes; the film is then dissolved.

Vienna, Austria - 3 December 2014: The Mediterranean diet is linked to improved cardiovascular performance in patients with erectile dysfunction, according to research presented at EuroEcho-Imaging 2014 by Dr Athanasios Angelis from Greece. Patients with erectile dysfunction who had poor adherence to the Mediterranean diet had more vascular and cardiac damage.

EuroEcho-Imaging is the annual meeting of the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI), a branch of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), and is held 3-6 December in Vienna, Austria.

Now come targets for six other conditions, including diabetes coronary heart disease, asthma and depression, writes Dr Martin Brunet, a GP in Surrey. "But the data on which they are based are flawed, and the approach incentivises potentially harmful overdiagnosis," he argues.

DURHAM, N.H. - Environmentalists dispirited by the Republicans' dominance of the recent midterm elections can take heart: non-Tea Party Republicans' views on science and environmental issues are closer to those of Independents than to Tea Party supporters. That's the primary finding of new research by University of New Hampshire sociologists, published this week in the journal Environmental Politics.