Culture

Contrary to the common perception among physicians that poor people sue doctors more frequently, Ramon L. Jimenez from the Monterey Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Institute and his team demonstrate that socioeconomically disadvantaged patients, in fact, tend to sue physicians less often. Their work suggests that this myth may exist because of subconscious prejudices or stereotypes that affect thinking and decision making without doctors being aware of it - a phenomenon known as unconscious bias. Dr.

PASADENA, Calif., (February 27, 2012) – Children and adolescents who are overweight or obese are more likely to have asthma than their healthy weight counterparts, according to a new Kaiser Permanente Southern California study published in the online edition of Obesity. The study, which included more than 681,000 children between ages 6 and 19, found that the association between asthma and body mass index varied by race and ethnicity.

A new study has found that patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) who have not responded to interferon treatments experience long-term benefits when they switch to the targeted drug imatinib. Published early online in Cancer, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the study indicates that imatinib is the treatment of choice for these patients.

SALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 27, 2012 – University of Utah mathematicians developed a set of calculus equations to make it easier for doctors to save Tylenol overdose patients by quickly estimating how much painkiller they took, when they consumed it and whether they will require a liver transplant to survive.

"It's an opportunity to use mathematical methods to improve medical practice and save lives," says Fred Adler, a professor of mathematics and biology and coauthor of a study that developed and tested the new method.

NEW YORK – February 24, 2012 – A recent study in the Review of Financial Studies proposes a new, valuation-based measure of equity market segmentation. Equity market segmentation occurs when stocks of similar risk in different countries are priced differently. The study, by Columbia Business School Professor Geert Bekaert, Chazen Senior Scholar at The Jerome A. Chazen Institute of International Business at Columbia Business School and the Leon G.

PHILADELPHIA -- Would you be able to find an automated external defibrillator if someone's life depended on it? Despite an estimated one million AEDs scattered around the United States, the answer, all too often when people suffer sudden cardiac arrests, is no.

NEW YORK (February 24, 2012) – A new study by the University of California, Berkeley, Wildlife Conservation Society, and others uses a new scientific methodology for establishing marine protected areas in Madagascar that offers a "diversified portfolio" of management options – from strict no-take zones to areas that would allow fishing.

How we move is an excellent indicator of overall health. When we feel good, we move around continually. When we're in pain, we reduce our physical activity. This observation might seem trivial, but it has led to an original approach for evaluating chronic pain. A team from EPFL's Laboratory of Movement Analysis and Measurement (LMAM) has developed a clever, easy-to-use visual tool to help doctors assess their patients' pain levels. The research appears online February 23 in the journal PLoS One.

The loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs is a topic that can provoke heated arguments about globalization. But what do the cold, hard numbers reveal? How has the rise in foreign manufacturing competition actually affected the U.S. economy and its workers?

Los Angeles, CA (February 23, 2012) Do strict underage drinking laws really have a positive impact on society? A recent study finds that strictly enforcing possession of alcohol under the legal age or PULA (also known as PAULA) laws on teenagers reduces the likelihood that they will engage in alcohol-related crime as adults. This study was documented in the article "The Relationship between Underage Alcohol Possession and Future Criminal Behavior: An Empirical Analysis Using Age-Period Cohort Characteristics Models," published in SAGE Open.

NEW YORK (February 23, 2012) – The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme (SOCP) announced today Sumatra's first ever successful sentence of an illegal orangutan owner and trader in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia.

The seven-month prison sentence is only the third for Indonesia, despite orangutans being strictly protected under Indonesian law since 1924.

Calorie listings on fast-food chain restaurant menus might meet federal labeling requirements but don't do a good job of helping consumers trying to make healthy meal choices, a new Columbia University School of Nursing (CUSON) study reports.

Washington, D.C. –Today the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues posted on its website, www.bioethics.gov, hundreds of supporting documents related to its investigation into the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) studies conducted in Guatemala in the 1940s. The documents include a spreadsheet that Commission staff painstakingly created to document the research subjects in Guatemala.

HUNTSVILLE, TX (2/23/12) – A Sam Houston State University professor is working on a series of studies that examine the effects of race and ethnicity on state and federal sentencing outcomes, including incarceration and sentence length decisions.

BEER-SHEVA, Israel, February 23, 2012 – A new study on the prevalence of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among firefighters in Israel indicates that approximately 90 percent show some form of full or partial symptoms.

According to the study by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev's Dr. Marc Lougassi, a firefighter himself, 24 percent of active firefighters in Israel suffer from full PTSD, 67 percent display partial PTSD while only nine percent showed no symptoms.