Culture

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A hole in public policy is shortchanging U.S. soldiers and civilian workers who become casualties of a new-age war strategy that leans heavily on private contractors, a new University of Illinois study says.

Law and labor professor Michael LeRoy says contractors employ workers who now perform risky duties such as transportation and security that were once handled by the military, and also routinely supervise troops on non-combat projects such as building roads and schools.

Boston, MA— A comprehensive review of national opinion polls taken before and after Congressional voting and when President Obama signed into law a major healthcare reform bill last month has found that the law's signing did not lead the country to come together in support of this landmark legislation. Partisan differences are stark, according to researchers at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) who analyzed 33 independent opinion polls in an effort to gauge public support for healthcare change.

KINGSTON, ON – Researchers at Queen's University have discovered that toddlers as young as 21 months appreciate good intentions, and will do their best to reward the efforts of people who try to help them.

Psychology professor Valerie Kuhlmeier and PhD student Kristen Dunfield found that toddlers are more likely to help someone who has made an effort to help them, even if that person was unable to accomplish the toddler's desired outcome.

With scientific evidence linking high levels of copper and iron to Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, and other age-related disorders, a new report in ACS' Chemical Research in Toxicology suggests specific steps that older consumers can take to avoid build up of unhealthy amounts of these metals in their bodies. "This story of copper and iron toxicity, which I think is reaching the level of public health significance, is virtually unknown to the general medical community, to say nothing of complete unawareness of the public," George J. Brewer states in the report.

A new and relatively little-known scientific discipline called molecular gastronomy has quietly revolutionized the dining experience in some famous restaurants and promises to foster a wider revolution in other restaurant and home kitchens. That's the conclusion of an article in ACS' Chemical Reviews, a monthly journal.

After increasing during much of the 20th century, forest cover in the eastern United States in recent decades has resumed its previous decline, according to an exhaustive new analysis published in the April 2010 issue of BioScience. The work is described in an article by Mark A. Drummond and Thomas R. Loveland of the US Geological Survey (USGS).

Higher rates of colorectal cancer incidence and mortality experienced by African-Americans may be driven largely by differences in health care utilization, and less by biology, according to a new study led by researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health.

In a study involving more than 60,000 people who were screened for colorectal cancer, researchers found that blacks and whites were equally likely to need a follow-up colonoscopy after a screening sigmoidoscopy, but blacks were less likely to actually receive the follow-up.