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A person's heart rate can reveal a lot about how they make decisions when feeling stressed, a Queensland University of Technology academic says.

Economics Associate Professor Uwe Dulleck, from the QUT Business Faculty, said stress in the workplace wasn't necessarily a bad thing, because it was, in fact, a natural reaction that had been given a negative connotation.

Professor Dulleck is leading the Australian arm of a study that was awarded an Australian Research Council grant to study the effects of both positive and negative stress on employees' decision-making.

More than a quarter of a million women have been sold as wives and baby-makers in South East Asia, but they are getting a raw deal in health care and social inclusion.

A PhD study undertaken by Queensland University of Technology nursing researcher Yung-Mei Yang has found that foreign wives often suffer low mental and physical health, and may suffer domestic violence or enter prostitution to make money.

Ms Yang surveyed more than 200 foreign brides living in Taiwan, most of whom were sold from Vietnam and Indonesia.

NEW YORK July, 16, 2008 – When it comes to allergies, both the problem and the solution are found within us. Our immune systems respond to foreign substances with an arsenal of cells. Some are programmed to "remember" invaders they've encountered in the past. Normally, anything previously identified as harmless is allowed to pass. Sometimes, however, the immune response goes awry, triggering an allergic reaction.

New findings from Bristol scientists could lead to future treatments to prevent lower limb amputations in diabetes - which currently affect 100 people a week in the UK (source Diabetes UK).

The research from the University of Bristol is published online in Circulation Research and was funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) and the European Vascular Genomic Network of Excellence (EVGN).

New York, NY, July 17th, 2008—A new national scorecard from The Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System finds that the U.S. health care system has failed to improve overall and that scores on access have declined significantly since the first national scorecard in 2006. Despite spending more on health care than any other industrialized nation, the U.S. overall continues to fall far short on key indicators of health outcomes and quality, with particularly low scores on efficiency.

Researchers have combined the efforts of two kinds of bacteria to produce hydrogen in a bioreactor, with the product from one providing food for the other. According to an article in the August issue of Microbiology Today, this technology has an added bonus: leftover enzymes can be used to scavenge precious metals from spent automotive catalysts to help make fuel cells that convert hydrogen into energy.

Cancer survival varies widely between countries according to a worldwide study published online today in Lancet Oncology.* More than 100 investigators contributed to the study.

And while the USA has the highest 5-year survival rate for prostate cancer than any of the 31 countries studied, cancer survival in black men and women is systematically and substantially lower than in white men and women.

Most of us have stood in a supermarket aisle, overwhelmed with the array of choices. Making those choices is easier if the options are categorized, according to new research in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Authors Cassie Mogilner (Stanford University), Tamar Rudnick, and Sheena S. Iyengar (both Columbia University) demonstrate a surprising phenomenon called the "mere categorization effect," where consumers are happier with their choices if their options are categorized, even if the categories are meaningless.

When people make choices for future consumption, they select a wider variety than when they plan to immediately consume the products. A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research examines the reasons behind this diversification of choices.

"Consumers' tendency to diversify their choices more for future than for present consumption has been demonstrated to be a robust phenomenon and to occur in a variety of situations," write authors Linda Court Salisbury (Boston College) and Fred M. Feinberg (University of Michigan).

A medication called cinacalcet—an important part of treatment to control high levels of parathyroid hormone (PTH) in patients receiving dialysis for end-stage renal disease (ESRD)—works by resetting the balance between calcium and PTH levels, according to a study in the November Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN).

NEW YORK, July 14, 2008 – A two-year study led by researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) reveals that low-carbohydrate and Mediterranean diets may be just as safe and effective in achieving weight loss as the standard, medically prescribed low-fat diet, according to a new study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.

The study was conducted by BGU and the Nuclear Research Center in Dimona, Israel, in collaboration with Harvard University, The University of Leipzig, Germany and the University of Western Ontario, Canada.

LOS ANGELES (EMBARGOED UNTIL JULY 16, 2008 AT 5 P.M. ET) – A new therapy developed at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center improves transplant rates and outcomes for patients awaiting living- and deceased-donor kidney transplantation, according to a study published in the July 17 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The therapy may provide an option for many patients "sensitized" to transplant antigens (human leukocyte antigens, or HLA) who previously would not have been candidates for transplantation because of their intense immune response to these HLA targets.

Boston, MA – Menthol cigarette brands have been rising in popularity with adolescents, and the highest use has been among younger, newer smokers. Researchers at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) explored tobacco industry manipulation of menthol levels in specific brands and found a deliberate strategy to recruit and addict young smokers by adjusting menthol to create a milder experience for the first time smoker. Menthol masks the harshness and irritation of cigarettes, allowing delivery of an effective dose of nicotine, the addictive chemical in cigarettes.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Purdue University is operating a virtual environment that enables scientists and engineers to interpret raw data collected with powerful instruments called dynamic atomic force microscopes.

The online tools, believed to be the first of their kind for the instruments, represent a research trend, with tools for other applications also being developed, said Arvind Raman, a Purdue professor of mechanical engineering.

On June 16, 2008, Barbara Ganschow of Palatine, IL, became the first person in the world to be successfully treated with a new device designed to make it safer and easier for heart specialists to create a hole in the cardiac atrial septum. The hole, created by the NRGTM Transseptal Needle, allows cardiac catheters to cross from the right side of the heart to the left side.