Culture

A higher rate of diabetes seen among adult Americans when compared to peers in England is explained primarily by a larger waist size rather than conventional risk factors such as obesity, according to a new study by researchers from the RAND Corporation, University College London and the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London.

Researchers say the findings offer more evidence that accumulating fat around the mid-section poses a health risk and suggests that studies of diabetes risk should emphasize waist size along with traditional risk factors.

Washington, DC – In a Perspective piece published online today in the New England Journal of Medicine, Georgetown University School of Medicine family medicine physician Susan Okie gives a comprehensive overview of change, and planned change, within the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The review comes as the FDA's commissioner, Margaret Hamburg, completes her first year as the agency's leader.

AMES, Iowa -- Murder takes an obvious toll on society in terms of the loss of human life, but what does it actually cost each time there's a murder? It's about $17.25 million according a recent Iowa State University study. The 'jobs saved or created' contingent of voodoo economists are loving this math.

WASHINGTON, DC, October 6, 2010 — Despite the popular, state-sponsored ideology that denies the existence of prejudice based on racial or skin color differences in Mexico, a new study from The University of Texas at Austin provides evidence of profound social inequality by skin color.

According to the study, individuals with darker skin tones have less education, have lower status jobs, are more likely to live in poverty, and are less likely to be affluent.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The trauma from hard combat can devastate veterans until old age, even as it influences others to be wiser, gentler and more accepting in their twilight years, a new University of Florida study finds.

The findings are ominous with the exposure of today's men and women to heavy combat in the ongoing Iraq and Afghanistan wars on terror at a rate that probably exceeds the length of time for U.S. veterans during World War II, said UF sociologist Monika Ardelt.

In a comparison of outcomes in Arizona for out-of-hospital cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) for cardiac arrest performed by bystanders, patients who received compression-only CPR were more likely to survive to hospital discharge than patients who received conventional CPR or no CPR, according to a study in the October 6 issue of JAMA.

Bad Hofgastein, 6 October 2010 -- European patients are in many countries, in fact, limited in their individual choice of medically assisted reproduction (MAR) treatment, experts from the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) stressed today at the European Health Forum Gastein (EHFG).

The EHFG is the most important conference on health care policy in the EU. This year it has attracted about 600 decision-makers from more than 40 countries in the fields of health care policy, research, science, and business as well as from patients' organizations.

Don't get all crazy about it, but light drinking during pregnancy does not harm a young child's behavioral or intellectual development, reveals research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

This week, in a Health in Action article published in PLoS Medicine, Maria Merritt and colleagues (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) report on a Field Training Guide for Human Subjects Research Ethics that they have developed to help train field workers in research ethics. The Field Training Guide for Human Subjects Research Ethics is freely available to the public. In this article the authors address how to identify field training needs and meet high standards of research ethics at every level of human subject interaction.

WASHINGTON, DC, October 5, 2010 — In a study of earnings inequality among white women, researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst find that having children reduces women's earnings, even among workers with comparable qualifications, experience, work hours and jobs. While women at all income levels suffer negative earnings consequences from having children, the lowest-paid women lose the most from motherhood. This earnings penalty ranges from 15 percent per child among low-wage workers to about 4 percent among the highly paid.

The Government's ability to intervene directly to protect people's health and well-being has reached its limits in modern society because the health issues of today are closely tied in with individual lifestyle choice and freedoms, a leading academic will say today (October 5).

Montreal, October 05, 2010 – Working nine-to-five may be the way to make a living, but it may be padding more than the wallet. According to a new study from the Université de Montréal, office-workers have become less active over the last three decades and this decreased activity may partly explain the rise in obesity. Their findings, published in the early online edition of Preventive Medicine, may have health implications for the millions of people toiling behind their desks who also eat too much.

SAN FRANCISCO – The stresses of poverty have long been associated with child abuse and neglect. In a study presented Sunday, Oct. 3, at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference and Exhibition in San Francisco, researchers directly linked an increased unemployment rate to child maltreatment one year later.

SAN FRANCISCO – Most toddlers can reach as high as a kitchen countertop, putting them at risk for severe burns from hot liquids, according to research presented Sunday, Oct. 3, 2010, at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference and Exhibition in San Francisco.