Culture

MIAMI — Nonwhite women reported receiving less social support than white women after cancer treatment, according to data presented at the Third AACR Conference on The Science of Cancer Health Disparities, held Sept. 30-Oct. 3, 2010.

MIAMI — African-American women with breast cancer living in Washington, D.C., are more likely to experience delays in treatment regardless of insurance type, socioeconomic status and cancer characteristics such as stage and grade.

Heather A. Young, Ph.D., an associate professor of epidemiology at The George Washington University, said these findings underscore the difficulties in measuring the impact of race and socioeconomic status on health outcomes.

New York, 1 October, 2010 – A special article published today in the journal Nutrition sharply criticizes the recent Report of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC). Authors Hite et al. argue the Report fails to conform to the standards of evidence-based medicine, despite its claimed reliance on a newly created USDA Nutrition Evidence Library.

The authors call the DGAC to task for failing to consider recent scientific results while at the same time further confusing the American public.

An intensive lifestyle intervention program designed to achieve and maintain weight loss improves diabetes control and cardiovascular disease risk factors in overweight and obese individuals with type 2 diabetes, according to four-year results of the Look AHEAD study, funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

MIAMI — A group-based, holistic, mind-body intervention was equally effective in treating persistent fatigue and improving quality of life for breast cancer survivors, regardless of their race.

"All women, black and white alike, reported significant improvement in fatigue post program completion, and improvement was maintained without further intervention," said researcher Susan E. Appling, M.S., C.R.N.P., nurse practitioner with the Prevention and Research Center at Mercy Medical Center.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Faster development of the promising field of cellulosic biofuels – the renewable energy produced from grasses and trees – is being significantly hampered by a "deep and thorny regulatory thicket" that makes almost impossible the use of advanced gene modification methods, researchers say.

MINNEAPOLIS/ST.PAUL (October 1, 2010) – After a major review of scientific information, six leading tobacco research and policy experts have concluded that a nicotine reduction strategy should be an urgent research priority because of its potential to profoundly reduce the death and disease from tobacco use. Their findings were published today in the journal Tobacco Control.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) today released a new study by scientists and conservationists showing that non-federal rangelands in the Western United States are productive, but that non-native grasses and shrubs pose a potential threat to the rangelands' productivity.

Montreal, October 1, 2010 – As baby boomers retire in greater numbers, serious doubts continue to be raised about the ability of the retirement income system to provide adequate replacement wages for the next generation of Canadians. According to a new study conducted by a Concordia University researcher for the Institute for Research on Public Policy, our country can learn valuable policy lessons from recent pension reforms in Norway, Sweden, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

(Rosemont, IL) Oct. 1 – For the past three decades, saturated fat has been considered a major culprit of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and as a result dietary advice persists in recommending reduced consumption of this macronutrient. However, new evidence shows that saturated fat intake has only a very limited impact on CVD risk -- causing many to rethink the "saturated fat is bad" paradigm.

An unparalleled heat wave in eastern Europe, coupled with intense droughts and fires around Moscow, put Earth's temperatures in the headlines this summer. Likewise, a string of exceptionally warm days in July in the eastern United States strained power grids, forced nursing home evacuations, and slowed transit systems. Both high-profile events reinvigorated questions about humanity's role in climate change.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA– Amblyopia, known as "lazy eye," is a major cause of vision problems in children and a common cause of blindness in people aged 20 to 70 in developed countries. In amblyopia the person's stronger eye is favored and his/her weaker eye gradually loses visual power as a result. When the condition is detected and treated before age 7, more than 75 percent of children achieve 20/30 vision or better, the Amblyopia Treatment Study reports. But parents and teachers can easily miss this problem–especially in very young children.

Drug companies have not only sponsored the science of a new condition known as female sexual dysfunction, they have helped to construct it, in order to build global markets for new drugs, reveals an article in this week's BMJ.

HOUSTON - Long associated with a worse outcome, researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have discovered that women treated for breast cancer while pregnant, in fact, have improved disease-free survival and a trend for improved overall survival compared to non-pregnant women treated for the disease.

Troy, N.Y. – The National Lighting Product Information Program (NLPIP) released its latest Specifier Report, designed to provide objective performance information on existing street lighting technologies -- including light-emitting diode (LED), induction, and high pressure sodium (HPS) streetlights. This report comes at a critical time when many municipalities, some with funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, are in the process of replacing HPS streetlights with LED and induction models.