Culture

A new drug which offers a radically different approach to treating certain types of heart failure has been shown to improve cardiac function in heart failure patients in its first clinical trials.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) today announced the award of $74 million to create four new Engineering Research Centers (ERCs) that will advance interdisciplinary research and education in partnership with industry.

Newspaper accounts of black executions in the old South reveal a social history that intersects race with crime and punishment.

Generations of American women have turned to door-to-door sales when a male-dominated workforce and lack of education prevented them from entering the workforce. They were known as the Tupperware Lady or the Avon Lady as they showed off their newest products to the “Lady of the House.”

Black applicants from 2000-2006 were 10 percentage points less likely than white applicants to be awarded research project grants from the National Institutes of Health after controlling for factors that influence the likelihood of a grant award, according to an NIH-commissioned study in the journal Science. In an accompanying commentary, NIH Director Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D., and Principal Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak, D.D.S, Ph.D., call the findings unacceptable and commit to immediate action by the NIH.

As the U.S. military prepares for the repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell" (DADT), policymakers are looking to other military bodies around the world that have successfully integrated gay, lesbian and bisexual (GLB) soldiers into military service. Now a new study from Tel Aviv University suggests that an integrated support and education dimension is essential to the successful assimilation of these soldiers into the U.S. armed forces.

Of 192 pharmaceutical advertisements in biomedical journals,only 18 percent were compliant with Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines, and over half failed to quantify serious risks including death, according to a new analysis.

People who set ambitious goals have a greater level of satisfaction compared to people who set conservative goals, according to a paper by the Cecile K. Cho, a University of California, Riverside assistant marketing professor.

Cho and co-author Gita Venkataramani Johar, a professor at Columbia University, set up two experiments to compare people who set ambitious goals to those who set conservative goals. They focused on situations in which goals were achieved, and measured the level of satisfaction with the achieved goals.

As suburban school districts have gained advantages over their urban counterparts, they have tenaciously clung to them, often at the expense of urban districts, a new study by University of Kansas researchers shows.

Given the recent turmoil in financial markets, progressives are calling for more regulations. Given the legendary inefficiency of government, would tighter regulation would actually offer investors better protection against losing their capital?

"Economic history shows us that strictly regulated stock markets do not necessarily function better than those that are given a free hand," says historian and economist Carsten Burhop of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn.

A new rehabilitation approach to treating children with cerebral palsy puts the focus on where a child lives and plays and not just improving the child's balance, posture and movement skills.

Women harbor a fat-stigma even though their family and closest friends may not judge them as “fat,” according to findings by Arizona State University social scientists. Those research results, published Aug. 17 in the journal Social Science & Medicine, have scientists questioning the weight of messages from sources outside one’s social networks, especially those in mass media marketing.

A new risk prediction tool can identify patients at high risk of serious blood clots (known as venous thromboembolism) who might need preventative treatment, says a study published online today.

A new category of "mom" is changing the face of the US economy and the tactics companies use to sell products to this powerful consumer group. The influential soccer mom of the 1990s, credited with voting Bill Clinton into the White House and catching the attention of Fortune 100 brands, has been replaced with iPhone-toting and Facebook-posting parents who are recommending and purchasing products beyond the soccer field and carpool lane. They are called Power Moms, described in a new book by Maria Bailey.

The lack of financial assistance to cover the cost of drugs to Medicare beneficiaries (the US government's health insurance program for people aged 65 or over, which currently covers 50 million US citizens) could result in an additional 18,000 patients discontinuing one or more prescriptions for essential drugs a year -- a 100 percent increase -- and others to not take their required medications regularly.