Culture

Chevy Chase, MD -- Heart failure is associated with a 30 percent increase in major fractures and also identifies a high-risk population that may benefit from increased screening and treatment for osteoporosis, according to a recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM).

Chevy Chase, MD -- Intermittent exercise with and without low oxygen concentrations (or hypoxia) can improve insulin sensitivity in type 2 diabetics, however exercise while under hypoxic conditions provides greater improvements in glycemic control than intermittent exercise alone, according to a recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM).

Researchers at The University of Manchester have for the first time shown a positive link between improvements in mental health services and a reduction in suicide rates.

Their research is published in The Lancet today (Thursday) in a study by the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness, based at the University's Centre for Mental Health and Risk.

The development of a medicine for patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus, based on autoantigen GAD65, received a setback following crucial clinical phase 3 trials that failed to show significant effects. One possible explanation may be seasonal variations in the immune system, claim those responsible for the study that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

When you sit down to read a restaurant menu, do you read it like a book? Or do your eyes flit from place to place to find the most enticing dish?

A new study by SF State researcher Sybil Yang, assistant professor of hospitality and tourism management, suggests that on average diners read menus sequentially like a book, and that their gaze doesn't linger noticeably longer over any particular location on the menu. The finding goes against decades of conventional wisdom in the restaurant business that suggests there is a menu "sweet spot" where diners look the longest.

Hamilton, ON (Feb. 1, 2012) - Researchers at McMaster University have discovered a brief 10-minute massage helps reduce inflammation in muscle.

As a non-drug therapy, massage holds the potential to help not just bone-weary athletes but those with inflammation-related chronic conditions, such as arthritis or muscular dystrophy, says Justin Crane, a doctoral student in the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster.

NEW YORK -- A study by Columbia Business School Professor Doron Nissim, Ernst & Young Professor of Accounting & Finance, reveals a better understanding of how investors value insurance companies. Two alternative approaches are typically used when estimating a company's equity value: fundamental valuation and relative valuation.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Most studies that have examined growing levels of health disparity in the United States have focused on the gap between the "haves" and the "have-nots" in terms of socioeconomic factors such as education and income.

But a new study has found, for the first time, that health disparities have grown dramatically among people in the same socioeconomic groups – often times more than the disparities have grown between groups.

Attending a financially poor school may have more of an effect on unhealthy adolescent weight than family poverty, according to Penn State sociologists.

Poor schools even influence how parental education protects kids from becoming overweight.

"It was once thought that family income was the main factor when we talk about the research on adolescent weight," said Molly Martin, assistant professor of sociology and demography. "That's not true. The environments the children live in play a key role in weight problems among adolescents."

PITTSBURGH -- Twitter users choose the microblogs they follow, but that doesn't mean they always like what they get. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Georgia Institute of Technology found that users say only a little more than a third of the tweets they receive are worthwhile.

Other tweets are either so-so or, in one out of four cases, not worth reading at all.

Even if the current weather situation may seem to speak against it, the probability of cold winters with much snow in Central Europe rises when the Arctic is covered by less sea ice in summer. Scientists of the Research Unit Potsdam of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association have decrypted a mechanism in which a shrinking summertime sea ice cover changes the air pressure zones in the Arctic atmosphere and impacts our European winter weather.

In an effort to reduce the inappropriate use of medical imaging and improve quality of care, a large, tertiary-care hospital has successfully implemented a computerized physician order entry (CPOE) system with clinical decision support for radiology, according to a study in the February issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology.

Comprehensive work studying the burden of ill-health and death resulting from specific conditions, injuries, and risk factors—the Global Burden of Disease project—has shown that the burden of ill-health around the world is highly inequitable. In this week's PLoS Medicine, the editors review progress towards the journal's goal of reflecting and addressing this inequity.

CHICAGO – Compliance with proposed emergency department length of stay measures for admitted, discharged, transferred, and observed patients does not differ significantly between safety-net hospitals (which serve higher proportion of patients with poorer health care status) and non-safety-net hospitals, addressing the issue of whether safety-net hospitals may not be able to meet certain performance measures and could be at risk of reduced funding, according to a study in the February 1 issue of JAMA.

Time can be important in an emergency department especially in a busy Level 1 Trauma Center like MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland, when getting patients appropriate care is essential. However, when the quality of an emergency department is judged by a patient's length of stay, time takes on a new meaning.

A study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that there is no significant difference between safety-net and non-safety-net hospitals when it comes to the length of stay for emergency patients.