Culture

New research by University of Warwick historian Dr Tim Lockley has found why yellow fever had a green bias in 19th century fever outbreaks in the southern states of the US. Almost half of the 650 people killed by yellow fever in Savannah Georgia in 1854 were Irish immigrants.

New research suggests the more friends we have on Facebook, the less likely we are to share information about charitable causes.

Economist Professor Kimberley Scharf, from the Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE) at the University of Warwick, claims when we have larger online social networks, we rely on other people to pass on information about opportunities to give. This phenomenon is called 'free riding'.

An international research team, led from the University of Leeds, has found that a common anti-angina drug could help protect the heart against carbon monoxide poisoning.

Animal studies have shown that the anti-angina drug ranolazine can significantly reduce the number of deaths from arrhythmias – irregular or abnormally paced heartbeats – that have been triggered by carbon monoxide.

The findings could have important implications for the development of a protective treatment for adults and children who have been exposed to toxic levels of the gas.

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Voters' racial attitudes, both conscious and unconscious, may be a significant factor in this year's U.S. presidential election, particularly since whites tend to prefer people of their own race, according to research presented at the 120th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association.

Leaky pipes are a common problem for the water industry: according to UK regulator, Ofwat, between 20 and 40 per cent of the UK's total water supply can be lost through damaged pipes. Developing more accurate ways of finding leaks would enable water companies to save revenue and reduce their environmental impact.

The system invented at Sheffield tests pipes by transmitting a pressure wave along them that sends back a signal if it passes any unexpected features, such as a leak or a crack in the pipe's surface.

In this study, the guinea pigs' hearts had an injury to the left ventricle, the thick walled lower chamber in the heart that pumps oxygenated blood to the body. The injury left a scar and thinned the ventricle, which showed both reduced pump function and greater susceptibility to arrhythmias.

Injured hearts that received the human cardiac muscle cell grafts showed partial re-muscularization of the scarred left ventricle.

Consistent with previous studies, tests showed that the injured hearts with the human cardiac cell grafts had improved mechanical function.

Is it possible for a health care system to redesign its services to better educate patients to deal with their immediate health issues and also become more savvy consumers of medicine in the long run?

The answer is yes, according to a study led by scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (SFGH) that was recently reported by the Institute of Medicine (IOM).

A new report found that research collaboration among multiple institutions is a growing trend.

The conclusion was drawn by noting increases in the amount of total expenditures for research and development that universities pass through to other institutions and receive from other institutions.

HOUSTON — Research from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has found that symptoms of depression in patients with newly diagnosed metastatic kidney cancer are associated with survival and inflammatory gene regulation may explain this link.

Linagliptin (trade name: Trajenta®) has been approved since August 2011 to improve blood glucose control ("glycaemic control") in adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus whose elevated blood glucose levels are inadequately controlled by diet and exercise. It is an option for patients who do not tolerate or should not take the usual treatment with the drug metformin. Moreover, linagliptin can be added if treatment with metformin alone is not sufficient.

The Susan G Komen for the Cure charity took an unpopular position regarding abortion and now the knives are out, including among the very people who praised them for so long. Here is the latest salvo against them.

Professors Lisa Schwartz and Steven Woloshin of the Center for Medicine and the Media at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice argue that last year's breast cancer awareness month campaign by Susan G Komen for the Cure "overstates the benefit of mammography and ignores harms altogether."

Treating chronic venous leg ulcers with a topical spray containing a unique living human cell formula provides a 52 percent greater likelihood of wound closure than treatment with compression bandages only.

That's the conclusion of a new study conducted in part at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and published online by The Lancet this week.

The International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project (the ITC Project) today launched a new report on the effectiveness of tobacco control policies in Uruguay. The ITC Uruguay Survey (the Survey) found that the country's world-leading, comprehensive tobacco control strategy has had positive effects on raising awareness of the true harms of smoking, reducing misperceptions about "light/mild" cigarettes, reducing exposure to secondhand smoke, and reducing the demand for tobacco products through tax increases.

Religious reasoning should not affect how judges decide cases—and may even infringe on religious freedom, says a scholar. There's a passage in the Old Testament's Deuteronomy that says if a case too difficult to decide comes before the courts, it should be brought to the Levite priests who will render a verdict in God's name. However, one University of Alberta researcher says that may be taking religious freedom a step too far.