Culture

People in the country's unhappiest communities spend about a quarter of the month so far down in the dumps that it can harm their productivity, according to economists.

Do you consider yourself a conscientious person? Then sign up for a fixed-rate mortgage. Neurotic? You'll probably opt for home ownership over renting.

With good planning, it is possible to promote the reuse of construction and demolition waste and thereby both conserve the environment and save on material costs. In the future, it will be even more important to assess how buildings can reasonably be repaired or demolished into parts, together with how the remaining service life of the parts can be utilized in new applications. The best method is to implement demolition planning already as a component of construction design.

Coral reefs provide a range of benefits, such as food, opportunities for income and education, but not everyone has the same access to them, according to a new study conducted by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE) at James Cook University.

The researchers examined how people from 28 fishing communities in Madagascar, Kenya, Tanzania and Seychelles benefit from the marine environment.

Coffee, apple juice, and vitamin C: things that people ingest every day are experimental material for chemist Eva-Maria Felix. The doctoral student in the research group of Professor Wolfgang Ensinger in the Department of Material Analysis is working on making nanotubes of gold. She precipitates the precious metal from an aqueous solution onto a pretreated film with many tiny channels. The metal on the walls of the channels adopts the shape of nanotubes; the film is then dissolved.

Vienna, Austria - 3 December 2014: The Mediterranean diet is linked to improved cardiovascular performance in patients with erectile dysfunction, according to research presented at EuroEcho-Imaging 2014 by Dr Athanasios Angelis from Greece. Patients with erectile dysfunction who had poor adherence to the Mediterranean diet had more vascular and cardiac damage.

EuroEcho-Imaging is the annual meeting of the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI), a branch of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), and is held 3-6 December in Vienna, Austria.

Now come targets for six other conditions, including diabetes coronary heart disease, asthma and depression, writes Dr Martin Brunet, a GP in Surrey. "But the data on which they are based are flawed, and the approach incentivises potentially harmful overdiagnosis," he argues.

DURHAM, N.H. - Environmentalists dispirited by the Republicans' dominance of the recent midterm elections can take heart: non-Tea Party Republicans' views on science and environmental issues are closer to those of Independents than to Tea Party supporters. That's the primary finding of new research by University of New Hampshire sociologists, published this week in the journal Environmental Politics.

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Dec. 2, 2014 - Myriad Genetics, Inc. (NASDAQ: MYGN) today announced that clinical data from three studies with Prolaris in prostate cancer patients will be highlighted at the 2014 Society of Urologic Oncology (SUO) Annual Meeting being held tomorrow in Rockville, Md. The new data show that the Prolaris test could save the healthcare system $6 billion over 10 years and that physicians are using the test appropriately to personalize treatment options for their patients.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. - First developed in China in about the year A.D. 150, paper has many uses, the most common being for writing and printing upon. Indeed, the development and spread of civilization owes much to paper's use as writing material.

According to some surveys, 90 percent of all information in businesses today is retained on paper, even though the bulk of this printed paper is discarded after just one-time use.

LOS ANGELES (Dec. 1, 2014) - Research scientists have developed a novel method to re-create brain and intestinal stem cells from patients who died decades ago, using DNA from stored blood samples to study the potential causes of debilitating illnesses such as inflammatory bowel disease.

The lab research, published in the journal STEM CELLS Translational Medicine, could yield new therapies for people who suffer from aggressive motor-neuron and gut-related conditions that proved fatal to the deceased patients who long-ago volunteered their blood samples.

Bethesda, MD (Dec. 2, 2014) -- Women with celiac disease present with fertility problems no more often than women in the general population, according to a new study in Gastroenterology1, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association.

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. (December 2, 2014) - If you are one of the millions of Americans who experiences a severe allergic reaction to food, latex or an insect sting, you should know the first line of defense in combating the reaction is epinephrine. Unfortunately, not all medical personnel know how important epinephrine is in bringing an allergic reaction under control.

CHICAGO - According to a new long-term study, diabetic patients with even mild coronary artery disease face the same relative risk for a heart attack or other major adverse heart events as diabetics with serious single-vessel obstructive disease. Results of the study were presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

CHICAGO - Patients value direct, independent access to their medical exams, according to a new study presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

Fragmentation of health information among physicians, healthcare institutions or practices, and inefficient exchange of test results can decrease quality of care and contribute to high medical costs. Improving communications and giving patients more control over their care are critical goals of health IT initiatives.