Culture

Budgetary constraints are one of the principal factors that limit the US Food & Drug Administration's ability to conduct frequent and rigorous site inspections of pharmaceutical manufacturers, according to research published in the International Journal of Business Continuity and Risk Management.

Many countries now acknowledge the need to obtain their energy supply from renewable sources such as biomass. Prof. Verstraete will explain how his team have developed a new anaerobic digestion reactor which can generate as much electricity as 25 wind turbines. These reactors use a consortium of methanogenic (methane-producing) bacteria to degrade waste and energy crops to produce biogas (a mixture of methane and carbon) which is then converted to electricity using a turbine.

The Financial Markets Group at the London School of Economics carried out the research. It developed a life-cycle model to investigate how prices of housing (purchasing and renting), the overall economy and wealth distribution react to changes in technology and financial conditions.

There were a number of conclusions from the investigation, including:

Patients with cancer who experience pain or depression also have a high rate of physical symptoms, such as fatigue, dry mouth and nausea, according to a report in the October 11 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Unless the IT industry adopts new energy-efficient technologies in the coming decade, it runs a serious risk of being unable to contribute to growing the global economy if limits are placed on carbon emissions. The findings come from an 18-month investigation by scholars at the Institute for Sustainable and Applied Infodynamics (ISAID) in Singapore and Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston.

CHICAGO -- Lifestyle interventions, including physical activity and structured weight loss programs, can result in significant weight loss for overweight, obese and severely obese adults, according to two reports that were posted online today by JAMA. The studies and accompanying editorials were made available early online to coincide with the presentation of these papers at the 28th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Obesity Society. The articles will appear in the October 27 print issue of JAMA.

In another article being released early online, Cheryl L. Rock, Ph.D., R.D., from Moores UCSD Cancer Center, La Jolla, Calif., and colleagues, conducted a randomized controlled trial of weight loss and weight maintenance in 442 overweight or obese women (BMI, 25 – 40), ages 18 to 69, over a two year period with follow-up between November 2007 and April 2010.

Educational policy is controversial: positions on achievement gaps, troubled schools and class size are emotionally charged, and research studies often come to very different conclusions.

But what if there was a new way of looking at the problem -- a way that treats education as a complex system (taking into account all interactions) and uses computer modeling and network analysis to provide a comprehensive look at the outcomes of policy choices?

A drug being developed as a treatment for ovarian cancer has shown single agent activity with durable disease control in some patients in a Phase-II clinical trial, an international research group has reported.

Dr Ursula Matulonis from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in the USA reported the results of the single-agent trial of the drug, called MLN8237, in a poster at the 35th Congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO).

For patients with advanced lung cancer whose tumors carry EGFR activating mutations, first-line treatment with erlotinib nearly tripled progression-free survival compared to a standard chemotherapy combination, show results from the first prospective Phase-III study to report findings in this setting.

The new results from the OPTIMAL trial were reported at the 35th Congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) in Milan, Italy.

Los Baños, Philippines – Environmental changes are to blame for a 15% drop in the yield of "miracle rice" – also known as rice variety IR8 – since the 1960s when it was first released and lauded for its superior yields that helped avert famine across Asia at the time.

IR8 used to produce 9.5 to 10.5 tons per hectare, significantly more than other varieties in the 1960s when average global rice yields were around only 2 tons per hectare. But, when grown today, IR8 can yield only around 7 tons per hectare.

HOUSTON, Oct. 8, 2010 – Direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic tests available from retailers and the Internet let people learn about their genomes without going to a doctor, but they raise the question of who is responsible for oversight and regulation of these tests. Critics worry about safety risks if consumers base important lifestyle or medical decisions on inaccurate or misunderstood test results.

Young adults continue to represent one of the largest groups of Americans without health insurance, with nearly 15 million people aged 19-29 uninsured in 2009—an increase of more than 1 million over 2008, according to a Commonwealth Fund report released today. However, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is poised to make a significant difference for this population, as up to 12.1 million could gain subsidized insurance once all of the law's provisions go into effect in 2014.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A new study looking at how hospitals identify pediatric patients who develop catheter-associated bloodstream infections (CA-BSI) found significant inconsistencies in the methods used to report the number of patients who develop them.

New York, NY, October 8, 2010—Young adults continue to represent one of the largest groups of Americans without health insurance, with nearly 15 million people aged 19-29 uninsured in 2009—an increase of more than 1 million over 2008, according to a Commonwealth Fund report released today. However, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is poised to make a significant difference for this population, as up to 12.1 million could gain subsidized insurance once all of the law's provisions go into effect in 2014.