Culture

Tel Aviv — Companies like Google and Zappos.com are famous for their "work hard, play hard" attitudes and friendly work environments, but are their employees healthier too? According to a Tel Aviv University researcher, a positive relationship with your co-workers has long-term health benefits.

OAK BROOK, Ill. – August 4, 2011 – A new study from researchers in Indiana reports that use of a retroflexion technique in the right side of the colon during colonoscopy is safe and results in the detection of additional adenomatous (precancerous) polyps in approximately four percent of patients. This result is comparable to that expected from a second colonoscopy in the forward view. The study appears in the August issue of GIE: Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, the monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE).

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Even though many Americans learn through community health screenings that they are at high risk for having a stroke, they rarely follow-up with their doctor for care.

But a new University of Michigan study shows high-risk stroke patients are twice as likely to get follow-up care from a primary care doctor if they receive a pep talk over the telephone.

Scientists using chemical isotopes in ancient soil to measure prehistoric tree cover--in effect, shade--have found that grassy, tree-dotted savannas prevailed at most East African sites where human ancestors and their ape relatives evolved during the past six million years.

"We've been able to quantify how much shade was available in the geological past," says University of Utah geochemist Thure Cerling, lead author of a paper titled "Woody cover and hominin environments in the past 6 million years" on the results in this week's issue of the journal Nature.

Malignant Sézary syndrome is characterized by the reproduction of a special type of white blood cells in the skin of male and female patients. In contrast to most other skin lymphomas, patients with Sézary syndrome manifest not only skin contamination but also contamination of blood and lymph nodes by degenerate T cells even at the onset of the disease.

Wearing compression stockings may be a simple low-tech way to improve obstructive sleep apnea in patients with chronic venous insufficiency, according to French researchers.

"We found that in patients with chronic venous insufficiency, compression stockings reduced daytime fluid accumulation in the legs, which in turn reduced the amount of fluid flowing into the neck at night, thereby reducing the number of apneas and hypopnea by more than a third," said Stefania Redolfi, MD, of the University of Brescia in Italy, who led the research.

New research funded by the Wellcome Trust has shown that sending text message reminders to healthcare workers in rural Africa can improve the implementation of national guidelines for treating malaria. The intervention led to more patients receiving accurate antimalarial treatment.

The study, published today in The Lancet, was carried out by researchers at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI)-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Nairobi.

A comparison clinical study of two aplastic anemia treatments found that ATGAM, currently the only licensed aplastic anemia drug in the United States, improved blood cell counts and survival significantly more than did Thymoglobulin, a similar but reportedly more potent treatment. The research was funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), a part of the National Institutes of Health; the study participants were treated and then followed at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

Unusually high clustering of last names within Italian academic institutions and disciplines indicates widespread nepotism in the country's schools, according to a new computational analysis.

New generation antidepressants, known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are associated with an increased risk of several severe adverse outcomes in older people compared with older tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs), finds a study published on bmj.com today.

The authors say the risks and benefits of different antidepressants should be carefully evaluated when prescribing these drugs to older people.

Older people taking new generation antidepressants are at more risk of dying or suffering from a range of serious health conditions including stroke, falls, fractures and epilepsy, a study involving researchers at The University of Nottingham has found.

A Franklin University professor recently developed an evolutionary computation approach that offers researchers the flexibility to search for models that can best explain experimental data derived from many types of applications, including economics.

To test the algorithm underlying that approach, Esmail Bonakdarian, Ph.D., an assistant professor of computing sciences and mathematics at Franklin, leveraged the Glenn IBM 1350 Opteron cluster, the flagship system of the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC).

PITTSBURGH—Ever since the Nobel Prize for nerve growth factor was awarded more than 30 years ago, researchers have been searching for ways to use growth factor clinically.

University of Pittsburgh Professor Yadong Wang has developed a minimally invasive method of delivering growth factor to regrow blood vessels. His research, which could be used to treat heart disease, the most common cause of death in the Western world, is published this week in the Aug. 1 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

High-calorie, high-sodium choices were on the menu when parents purchased lunch for their children at a San Diego fast-food restaurant. Why? Because both children and adults liked the food and the convenience.

Scheduling umpire crews in Major League Baseball (MLB) can be a daunting task. However, Tallys Yunes, assistant professor of management science at the University of Miami School of Business Administration and his collaborators have created a novel solution. The team developed an efficient method to generate high-quality schedules for the MLB.

The study is titled "Scheduling Major League Baseball Umpires and the Traveling Umpire Problem" published online ahead of print by the journal Interfaces, a popular outlet for practitioners in the field of Operations Research.