Culture

The prevalence of self-reported mental health disabilities increased in the U.S. among non-elderly adults during the last decade, according to a study by Ramin Mojtabai, MD, PhD, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. At the same time, the study found the prevalence of disability attributed to other chronic conditions decreased, while the prevalence of significant mental distress remained unchanged. The findings will appear in the November edition of the American Journal of Public Health.

Stockholm, Sweden: Melanoma of the eye (ocular or uveal melanoma) frequently spreads to the liver and, once this has happened, there is no effective treatment and patients die within an average of two to four months. Only about one in ten patients live for a year. Now, final results from a phase III study have demonstrated that a new treatment significantly extends the time patients can live without the disease progressing.

[Nairobi, 23 September 2011] East Africa is fighting the worst kala azar outbreak in a decade. Collaboration across the region through the Leishmaniasis East Africa Platform (LEAP) has resulted in the development of a new combination therapy (SSG&PM) which is cheaper and nearly halves the length of treatment from a 30 day course of injections to 17 days.

Treatment with the calcium-sensitizing drug levosimendan may be effective in improving muscle function in patients with respiratory muscle weakness, which often accompanies chronic diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and congestive heart failure, according to researchers in the Netherlands, who studied the effects of the drug on healthy volunteers. The drug, which is normally prescribed in patients with acute heart failure,increases the sensitivity of muscle tissue to calcium, improving the muscle'sability to contract.

DURHAM, N.H. – Between 2009 and 2010, one million more children in America joined the ranks of those living in poverty, bringing the total to an estimated 15.7 million poor children in 2010, an increase of 2.6 million since the recession began in 2007, according to researchers from the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire.

Students who attend sex-segregated schools are not necessarily better educated than students who attend coeducational schools, but they are more likely to accept gender stereotypes, according to a team of psychologists.

"This country starts from the premise that educational experiences should be open to all and not segregated in any way," said Lynn S. Liben, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, Human Development and Family Studies, and Education, Penn State. "To justify some kind of segregation there must be scientific evidence that it produces better outcomes."

An international team of researchers, including a UK collaboration led by BBSRC- and MRC-funded researchers at Imperial College London, with colleagues at University College London, and University of Cambridge has for the first time sequenced the genome of a man who was an Aboriginal Australian. They have shown that modern day Aboriginal Australians are the direct descendents of the first people who arrived on the continent some 50,000 years ago and that those ancestors left Africa earlier than their European and Asian counterparts.

Michael Jordan, Lady Gaga and Angelina Jolie.

Most people can probably name some award-winning athletes, musicians, and actors. But, if you were asked to name the winners of last year's Nobel Prizes in Economics, Physics, or Literature, could you do it?

In the September issue of Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, a team of distinguished psychological scientists argue for a new framework for identifying and supporting giftedness in all domains in the United States.

Family members or friends caring for aging or disabled individuals in California are under both financial and emotional strain and are likely to face even greater burdens, given recent cuts in state support for programs and services that support in-home care, write the authors of a new policy brief by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

CHICAGO – A survey of patients receiving treatment in a teaching facility found that patients prefer to be informed of trainee participation in their care, and consent rates appear to vary based on scenarios describing increased levels of resident participation, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

The NHS has stumped up an extra £625 million over the past decade on synthetic forms of insulin, when the recommended human alternatives— which are considerably cheaper— would have probably been just as effective, reveals research published online in BMJ Open.

The finding comes as a UN health summit in New York this week debates how to step up international efforts to tackle the rising global burden of non-communicable diseases, including diabetes.

New York, NY, September 20, 2011 – Most parents recognize that the influence of peers on their children's behavior is an undeniable fact. But, just how far do these influences reach? A study published in the September/October issue of Academic Pediatrics reports that adolescents are more likely to start drinking alcoholic beverages when they have large social networks of friends.

Insensitive, disrespectful or rude behavior by employees is rampant in US workplaces, yet consumers fail to report the offending workers and instead take their business elsewhere, researchers report in the latest edition of the Journal of Service Research.

Approximately one-third of consumers surveyed reported they're treated rudely by an employee on an average of once a month and that these and other episodes of uncivil worker behavior make them less likely to patronize those businesses.

Throughout history, science and religion have appeared as being in perpetual conflict, but a new study by Rice University suggests that only a minority of scientists at major research universities see religion and science as requiring distinct boundaries.

New research has found public sector workers are typically more pro-socially motivated than their private sector counterparts. The University of Bristol study, published today [21 Sep], examined motivational indicators in workers from both sectors across 51 countries.

But there are some nations where the reverse is true and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded study, led by academics in the University's Centre for Market and Public Organisation, explored whether corruption can explain variation in motivation across countries.