Tech

A new survey finds that, while the number of physicians who report having relationships with pharmaceutical manufacturers or other industrial companies has dropped in recent years, the vast majority of them still maintain such relationships. The study, conducted by the Mongan Institute for Health Policy (IHP) at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), appears in the Nov. 8 Archives of Internal Medicine and also documents changes in the frequency of particular types of relationships.

Relationships with drug manufacturers, device companies and other medical companies appear to be have decreased since 2004 but remain common among physicians, according to a report in the November 8 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

A new cognitive assessment tool with 16 items appears potentially useful for identifying problems in thinking, learning and memory among older adults, according to a report posted online today that will be published in the March 14 print issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

UPTON, NY In theory, plants could be the ultimate green factories, engineered to pump out the kinds of raw materials we now obtain from petroleum-based chemicals. But in reality, getting plants to accumulate high levels of desired products has been an elusive goal. Now, in a first step toward achieving industrial-scale green production, scientists from the U.S. Department of Energys (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators at Dow AgroSciences report engineering a plant that produces industrially relevant levels of compounds that could potentially be used to make plastics.

Cars and trucks race down the highway, turn off into town, wait at traffic lights and move slowly through side streets. Electricity flows in a similar way – from the power plant via high voltage lines to transformer substations. The flow is controlled as if by traffic lights. Cables then take the electricity into the city centre. Numerous switching points reduce the voltage, so that equipment can tap into the electricity at low voltage. Thanks to this highly complex infrastructure, the electricity customer can use all kinds of electrical devices just by switching them on.

BOSTON, November 8, 2010 – California pistachios took center stage at this year's American Dietetic Association's annual Food & Nutrition Conference & Expo (FNCE), the industry's premier conference where thousands of registered dietitians gather to learn about innovative nutrition research and emerging health trends.

Patients who undergo total hip replacements are more at risk for having a serious fall while recovering in the hospital than patients undergoing other orthopedic procedures, according to a recent study. The study, which will be presented at the American College of Rheumatology's annual meeting, Nov. 7-11, in Atlanta, also identified other factors involved in patient falls that could help hospitals devise strategies to reduce these accidents.

According to research on fatty acids conducted at the universities of Helsinki and Tampere, the consumption of canola-type rapeseed oil decreases the level of fibrinogen detrimental to health in the body. The increased fibrinogen level, caused by an imbalance in essential fats in one's diet, decreases when saturated fatty acids are replaced with rapeseed oil. The research results were published in the journal Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids.

Professor Andre Geim, who along with his colleague Professor Kostya Novoselov won the 2010 Nobel Prize for graphene – the world's thinnest material, has now modified it to make fluorographene – a one-molecule-thick material chemically similar to Teflon.

Fluorographene is fully-fluorinated graphene and is basically a two-dimensional version of Teflon, showing similar properties including chemical inertness and thermal stability.

Jerusalem, November 8, 2010 – Research carried out in Mali, West Africa, has demonstrated that a new, safe and uncomplicated insect control method, developed at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, can bring about a serious decline in malaria-bearing mosquitoes in afflicted regions in the world.

Just like an electrical switch allows the flow of electricity into electrical circuits, relativistic transparency in plasma can act like a fast optical switch allowing the flow of light through otherwise opaque plasma. Modern day lasers, such as the Trident laser in Los Alamos National Laboratory delivers a 200 terawatt power pulse (roughly 400 times the average electrical consumption of the United States) in half a trillionth of a second (picosecond) time. As shown in Fig.

Applying a vapor rub is effective for treating children with night-time cough and congestion and improves sleep for children with cold symptoms, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers.

Washington, DC -- New research from Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) suggests that up to 40 percent of scleroderma patients will not be correctly diagnosed with the disorder using a new automated commercial screening test. The findings of the study will be presented Wednesday, November 10th at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the American College of Rheumatology in Atlanta, Georgia.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – In the largest study to date of the Arthritis Foundation's Tai Chi program, participants showed improvement in pain, fatigue, stiffness and sense of well-being.

Their ability to reach while maintaining balance also improved, said Leigh Callahan, PhD, the study's lead author, associate professor in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine and a member of UNC's Thurston Arthritis Research Center.