Culture

University of Rochester Medical Center orthopaedic scientists are a step closer to developing a vaccine to prevent life-threatening methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections following bone and joint surgery.

A team of researchers at Columbia Engineering and Columbia University Medical Center announced today the results of the first study comparing bone structure in Chinese-American women to Caucasian women. The report, just presented at the Orthopaedic Research Society's annual meeting at Long Beach, CA, found that pre-menopausal Chinese-American women have far greater bone strength than their Caucasian counterparts, as determined by a breakthrough technological advance.

January 14, 2011 -- Intensive early education programs for low-income children have been shown to yield numerous educational benefits, but few studies have looked more broadly at their impact on health and health behaviors. A new study conducted by researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health examines this issue, using data from a the well-known Carolina Abecedarian Project (ABC), a randomized control study that enrolled 111 infants in the 1970s and continued to follow them through age 21.

The people in Spain at greatest risk of suffering farming accidents are those aged over 65, followed by people under 16 and people from outside the agricultural sector. These are the results of a study by the Public University of Navarre (UPNA), which shows that most of these deaths are due to people being crushed by tractors.

DURHAM, NC and KING COUNTY, WA – An effort in King County, Washington, to add nutrition facts labeling to fast food menus had no effect on consumer behavior in its first year.

As part of a comprehensive effort to stem the rise in obesity, the county, which includes Seattle and environs, imposed a mandatory menu labeling regulation on all restaurant chains with 15 or more locations beginning in January, 2009. Restaurants had to disclose calorie information at the point of purchase.

Montreal, 11 January 2011—What is the future for North America's environment? Much of the answer is up to us.

A new report examines the major forces and underlying trends likely to shape the environment of North America in 2030 and outlines nine areas where decisions today will affect our environmental future in varying degrees.

Men are more likely than women to seek jobs in which competition with coworkers affects pay rates, a preference that might help explain persistent pay differences between men and women, a study at the University of Chicago shows.

The study, which covered most of the nation's largest metropolitan areas, also revealed regional variation in how much women desire jobs in which competition plays a role in determining wages. In cities where local wages are generally lower, women tend to want jobs in which competition determines wages, the study showed.

When it comes to advising obese patients, blacks receive less weight reduction and exercise counseling from physicians than their white counterparts. This is according to a recent study conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who examined the impact of patient and doctor race concordance on weight-related counseling. The results are featured in the January 2011 online issue of Obesity.

GALVESTON, Texas — A new study by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston reveals that the prevalence of hypertension in older Mexican-Americans living in the Southwest region of the United States has increased slightly in the last decade.

Researchers suspect the rise is due, in part, to the increase in diabetes and obesity.

Although hypertension, or high blood pressure, is one of the most common diseases in the United States, affecting more than 72 million Americans, it is one of the most manageable risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

What is it that makes you want to return to a restaurant again and again?

The food? The service? Atmosphere?

Sure.

But according to research spearheaded by John Antun, associate professor in the Department of Retail, Hospitality and Tourism and director of the Culinary Institute at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Robert E. Frash Jr., chair of the HRT department at the College of Charleston (S.C.), there are two more factors that must be added to mix: the social experience and the availability of healthy menu options.

WASHINGTON -- Global surface temperatures in 2010 tied 2005 as the warmest on record, according to an analysis released Wednesday by researchers at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York.

Persistence paid off for a University of Alberta paleontology researcher, who after months of pondering the origins of a fossilized jaw bone, finally identified it as a new species of pterosaur, a flying reptile that lived 70 million years ago.

Victoria Arbour says she was stumped when the small piece of jaw bone was first pulled out of of a fossil storage cabinet in the U of A's paleontology department.

"It could have been from a dinosaur, a fish or a marine reptile," said Arbour. "

Researchers at the University of Calgary, in Canada, collaborating with the University of Paderborn, in Germany, are working on a way to make quantum networks a reality and have published their findings in the journal Nature. A similar finding by a group at the University of Geneva, in Switzerland is reported in the same issue.

Adding customer service representatives to a computerized radiology workflow management system means improved patient and referring physician satisfaction and increased radiologist efficiency, an analysis of a program at Children's Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati finds.

Seven customer service representatives now staff the radiology reading room from 7:00 am – 11:00 pm daily and are responsible for ensuring that referring physicians receive completed radiology reports quickly.