Culture

STANFORD, Calif. — A sudden drop in blood pressure while undergoing dialysis has long vexed many kidney patients. Side effects associated with this situation over the long term range from stroke to seizure to heart damage to death. Patients also suffer in the short term with gastrointestinal, muscular and neurologic symptoms.

Now one more disturbing side effect can be been added to this list.

STANFORD, Calif. — When it comes to hitting a golf ball hard, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have identified several biomechanical factors that appear to separate the duffers from the pros.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Hospice services substantially improved the provision of care and support for nursing home patients dying of dementia and their families, according to an analysis of survey responses from hundreds of bereaved family members. The research comes as hospice funding has received particular scrutiny in the debate over Medicare spending.

Boston, MA – Global population is expected to hit 7 billion later this year, up from 6 billion in 1999. Between now and 2050, an estimated 2.3 billion more people will be added—nearly as many as inhabited the planet as recently as 1950. New estimates from the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations also project that the population will reach 10.1 billion in 2100.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Newspaper endorsements for presidential candidates can influence voting decisions, according to newly published research co-authored by Brown University economist Brian Knight. The paper, co-authored by Chun Fang Chiang, demonstrates that voters are more likely to support the recommended candidate following a newspaper's endorsement, but any degree of influence depends on the credibility of the paper's pick. The findings are published in The Review of Economic Studies.

NEW YORK – July 28, 2011 – A forthcoming paper in the American Marketing Association's Journal of Marketing Research by Professor Michel Tuan Pham, Kravis Professor of Business, Marketing, Columbia Business School; Iris W. Hung, Assistant Professor of Marketing, NUS Business School, National University of Singapore; and Gerald J.

NEW YORK – July 28, 2011 – The Journal of Financial Economics recently published a paper by Andrew Ang, Chair, Ann F. Kaplan Professor of Business and Chair, Finance and Economics Division at Columbia Business School; Sergiy Gorovyy, PhD candidate, Columbia Business School; and Gregory B. van Inwegen, Head of Quantitative Research/Managing Director for Tailored Portfolio Group of Citi Private Bank, that was the first paper to formally investigate hedge fund leverage using actual hedge fund ratios.

A recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM) found that the greater an individual's total muscle mass, the lower the person's risk of having insulin resistance, the major precursor of type 2 diabetes.

ST. PAUL, Minn. – A new type of therapy may help people with symptoms such as pain, weakness, or dizziness that can't be explained by an underlying disease, according to a study published in the July 27, 2011, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. These symptoms, which can also include fatigue, tingling and numbness, are also known as functional or psychogenic symptoms.

Can a cozy dining table and nice music prompt people to reach for the greens and go light on dessert?

So suggests a new study probing why people tend to eat more-nutritious meals at home than away from home. The findings, based on data from 160 women who reported their emotional states before and after meals, add to mounting evidence that psychological factors may help override humans' wired-in preference for high-fat, sugary foods.

Got lots of fast food restaurants and other outlets that sell junk food in your neighborhood? Then your teen is more likely to nosh regularly on burgers and fries and wash them down with a soda.

That is the unpalatable finding of a new study from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research that examined the effect of higher concentrations of less healthy food outlets on adolescent junk food consumption.

• Patients' own kidney cells can be reprogrammed and used as therapy against kidney disease
• Cells can easily be collected from the urine
• 88,000 patients are waiting for a kidney transplant in the United States, and they wait for an average of 3 to 5 years

Subtle physical changes impact panic sufferers more severely

People with panic disorder probably won't be surprised by the results, Meuret said.

By definition, the majority of the 13 symptoms of panic attack are physiological: shortness of breath, heart racing, dizziness, chest pain, sweating, hot flashes, trembling, choking, nausea and numbness. Only three are psychological: feeling of unreality, fear of losing control and fear of dying.

A wide range of clinical and non-clinical factors can affect whether women go on to have a vaginal delivery after having a caesarean, according to two major reviews published in the August issue of the Journal of Advanced Nursing.

Private health insurance, induction, cervical ripening agents, local guidelines and scoring systems were just some of the issues explored by the reviews of 60 studies, published over 24 years, covering more than 700,000 women and hundreds of hospitals in 13 countries.

While some pain killers need to be injected into the damaged tissue in order to work, topical anaesthetics only need to be spread on the surface. The earliest examples of "topical" anaesthetics contained cocaine, but now a new systematic review has shown that newer agents that don't contain cocaine can effectively treat pain caused by torn skin. This makes these pain killers an attractive choice for doctors who need to sew-up a patient's skin wound.