Culture

CHICAGO --- Will you have a heart attack or a stroke in your lifetime? Your odds may be worse than you think.

Men and women may have a false sense of security about their chances of having a heart attack or stroke based on the current practice of calculating a patient's risk 10 years into the future. New Northwestern Medicine research shows a young or middle-aged adult who is at low risk in the short term may be at very high risk in the long term -- if he or she has just one or two risk factors such as higher than optimal cholesterol or blood pressure levels.

BOSTON – More than 100,000 implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) are implanted in the United States annually, fully a quarter of those are generator replacements simply because the battery is depleted. But are all those replacements necessary and should they actually be performed?

Writing in the Jan. 26 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors at the CardioVascular Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center suggest the answer is surely no.

NBA players may be too conservative with their shots, according to a comparison with a theoretical model describing shot selection reported Jan. 25 in the online journal PLoS ONE.

DALLAS – Jan. 25, 2012 – A new study in today’s New England Journal of Medicine reports that while an individual’s risk of heart disease may be low in the next five or 10 years, the lifetime risk could still be very high, findings that could have implications for both clinical practice and public health policy.

ST. PAUL, Minn. – A new position statement issued by the American Academy of Neurology calls on neurologists to begin screening their patients for abusive or violent treatment by family, caretakers or others. The position statement is published in the January 25, 2012, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Types of abuse include elder abuse, child abuse, sexual abuse, financial abuse, emotional abuse, bullying, cyberbullying and violence.

Boston, MA (January 25, 2012)­—Ancient humans may not have had the luxury of updating their Facebook status, but social networks were nevertheless an essential component of their lives, a new study suggests.

The study's findings describe elements of social network structures that may have been present early in human history, suggesting how our ancestors may have formed ties with both kin and non-kin based on shared attributes, including the tendency to cooperate. According to the paper, social networks likely contributed to the evolution of cooperation.

Historic legal rulings did not protect the rights of persons with disabilities, while legal rulings concerned with race or gender provided much more protection of individual rights and freedoms according to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms Queen's University PhD student Christopher A. Riddle has determined in a recent study.

"The motivation for this examination came from the very simple observation that the rights of persons with disabilities were not being promoted through the very mechanisms designed to ensure justice for everyone," says the study's author.

(Washington, January, 25, 2012) -- Research!America's Board chair, former Congressman John Edward Porter (R-IL), applauds President Obama's commitment to protect our nation's investment in basic research.

Consumers who remember laundry detergents from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s are about to get that déjà vu feeling — and younger people quite a surprise — as detergent manufacturers once again try a major repackaging of their products. Laundry capsules that contain single doses of detergent and take up less space than conventional detergents are set to make a comeback. That's the topic of an article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society.

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) travelers have an increased risk of illness during trips to industrialized countries, but not to developing or tropical regions, according to a new study in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association.

In an Essay that expands on a previous proposal to use the courts to prosecute those involved in ghostwriting on the basis of it being legal fraud, Xavier Bosch from the University of Barcelona, Spain and colleagues lay out three outline specific areas of legal liability in this week's PLoS Medicine.

San Diego – Cytori Therapeutics (NASDAQ: CYTX) announced today the publication of previously reported six-month outcomes from APOLLO, the Company's European clinical trial evaluating adipose-derived stem and regenerative cells (ADRCs) in patients with acute myocardial infarction (heart attack or AMI), as Research Correspondence in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Ottawa, Ontario –To fully understand the causes of the obesity epidemic in Aboriginal children requires an understanding of the unique social and historical factors that shape the Aboriginal community. A review article published in Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism emphasizes that early childhood obesity prevention efforts should begin focusing with the parents before and during pregnancy and on breastfeeding initiatives and nutrition in the early childhood development stages.

A daily dose of skimmed milk, enriched with two components found in dairy products, may help to curb the frequency of painful gout flare-ups, indicates research published online in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.

Previous long term research has shown that the risk of gout is greater among those whose diet is low on dairy products.

And experimental studies indicate that certain components of dairy products, particularly glycomacropeptide (GMP) and G600 milk fat extract (G600), seem to dampen down the inflammatory response to gout crystals.

NEW YORK -- The experience of daily positive affect -- a mild, happy feeling -- and self-affirmation helps some patients with chronic diseases, including coronary artery disease, high blood pressure and asthma, make better decisions about their health.