Body

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Free drug samples provided to physicians by pharmaceutical companies could actually be costing uninsured patients more in the long run, according to a study done by researchers at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center and colleagues.

PHILADELPHIA – Scientists at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center have developed a risk prediction assessment for lung cancer specifically for African Americans that suggests a greater risk from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), according to a report published in the September issue of Cancer Prevention Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

New York, NY, September 5, 2008—Private Medicare Advantage (MA) plans will be paid an average 12.4 percent more per enrollee in 2008 compared to what the same enrollee would have cost in the traditional Medicare fee-for-service program, according to a new report from The Commonwealth Fund. Even if the payment reductions to MA plans mandated by the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008 (MIPPA) – scheduled to take effect beginning in 2010 – had been fully in place in 2008, MA plans still would have been paid 10.6 percent more than expected fee-for-service costs.

Heidelberg, 5 September 2008 – Even scientists define 'a gene' in different ways, so it comes as little surprise that the media also have various ways of framing the concept of a gene, according to a new study appearing in the October 2008 issue of EMBO reports.

The study, Frame that gene, is based on the analysis of 300 articles in British and Norwegian newspapers: The Guardian, The Sun and The Daily Mail from the UK; and Aftenposten, Dagbladet, and VG from Norway.

Better guidance is urgently needed for doctors in child protection cases to prevent them from being deterred from acting to protect children, says an editorial on bmj.com today.

Should nurses be the frontline providers of primary care, taking the place of general practitioners as the first point of patient contact? Two experts debate the issue on bmj.com today.

Nurses can deliver as high quality care as general practitioners in most areas of general practice including preventive health care, the management of long term conditions, and first contact care for people with minor illness, writes Bonnie Sibbald, Professor of health services research at the University of Manchester.

AMES, Iowa -- There are numerous plant-parasitic nematodes in the world, but only a handful are responsible for the largest part of an estimated $157 billion in agricultural damage globally every year. Nematodes are small worms that burrow into plant roots and feed off living cells.

Now, Iowa State University researchers have contributed to the release of the annotated genome of one of the most destructive nematodes: Meloidogyne incognita -- the southern root-knot nematode, as reported recently in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

Source:

Few materials have exercised as much of a hold on the human imagination, or on human history, as has gold.

But for all of its popular uses – money, medals, jewelry and more – gold's potential as a catalyst lay hidden until the 1980s, when Masatake Haruta and Graham Hutchings independently discovered that gold, which had long been considered inactive, could be an extraordinarily good catalyst. Haruta demonstrated the low-temperature oxidation of CO and Hutchings the hydrochlorination of acetylene to vinyl chloride.

Princeton scientists have discovered a way of stimulating organic molecules that they expect will prompt researchers to create materials from new kinds of chemical reactions.

The method of catalysis, when used, could lead to groundbreaking kinds of drugs and agricultural chemicals and will provide a shortcut to standard multi-step methods of chemical production.

Paisley, Scotland – September 04, 2008 - A new study found that trained sexologists could infer a woman's history of vaginal orgasm by observing the way she walks. The study is published in the September 2008 issue of The Journal of Sexual Medicine, the official journal of the International Society for Sexual Medicine and the International Society for the Study of Women's Sexual Health.

Patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) may have normal alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels in spite of having advanced fibrosis, according to a new study in the September issue of Hepatology, a journal published by John Wiley & Sons on behalf of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD). The article is available online at Wiley Interscience (www.interscience.wiley.com).

Patients with liver cancer can become viable candidates for transplantation if their tumors respond to treatment, a new study suggests. This report is in the September issue of Hepatology, a journal published by John Wiley & Sons on behalf of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD). The article is available online at Wiley Interscience (www.interscience.wiley.com).

Patients with acute liver failure (ALF) could be saved by a transplant from a living donor (LDLT), according to a new study in the September issue of Liver Transplantation, a journal by John Wiley & Sons. The recent experience of U.S. patients shows that recipient mortality rates and donor morbidity rates are acceptable. The article is also available online at Wiley Interscience (www.interscience.wiley.com).

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Biological systems are constantly evolving in ways that increase their fitness for survival amidst environmental fluctuations and internal errors. Now, in a study of cell metabolism, a Northwestern University research team has found new evidence that evolution has produced cell metabolisms that are especially well suited to handle potentially harmful changes like gene deletions and mutations.