Cambridge, MA—February 17, 2010—President Barack Obama has pledged to support urban America through policy initiatives, and has created a White House Office of Urban Affairs which reports directly to the President. He plans to implement the Promise Neighborhoods Initiative, which will be patterned after the Harlem Children's Zone, HCZ. In recent years, a lack of federal resources (mass transit, social service, public works, education, job training) designed to help disadvantaged individuals gain financial security have aggravated problems in inner-city neighborhoods.
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WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Several Midwestern states could be facing increased winter and spring flooding, as well as difficult growing conditions on farms, if average temperatures rise, according to a Purdue University researcher.
Keith Cherkauer, an assistant professor of agricultural and biological engineering, ran simulation models that show Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan could see as much as 28 percent more precipitation by the year 2070, with much of that coming in the winter and spring. His projections also show drier summer and fall seasons.
Vigorous two-party competition provides the best guarantee for meaningful, broad-based governance and modest salaries for lawmakers add a second protection against narrow-interest legislation, finds a national study spanning 120 years of state lawmaking published online this week.
Although government critics often call for transparency, executive vetoes, and professional pay to curb pork barrel legislation and other bills that benefit only one lawmaker's constituents, the study finds that sharp competition and lower salaries, in fact, are better remedies.
A new study confirms that rates of obesity and other chronic health problems have risen in American children in recent years, but it also shows that many children's conditions will improve or resolve over time. The findings that appear in the Feb. 17 Journal of the American Medical Association support the need for continuous access to health services and suggest directions for future research.
Waters from warmer latitudes — or subtropical waters — are reaching Greenland's glaciers, driving melting and likely triggering an acceleration of ice loss, reports a team of researchers led by Fiamma Straneo, a physical oceanographer from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).
"This is the first time we've seen waters this warm in any of the fjords in Greenland," says Straneo. "The subtropical waters are flowing through the fjord very quickly, so they can transport heat and drive melting at the end of the glacier."
Governments and experts are calling for action to combat the medical, economic and social costs of rising rates of preventable conditions like obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and some cancers, states an article in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) (pre-embargo link only) "http://www.cmaj.ca/embargo/cmaj091403.pdf.
OKLAHOMA CITY – New research by the Oklahoma Tobacco Research Center (OTRC) shows that concentrations of secondhand tobacco smoke inhaled in smoking rooms of restaurants and bars are exceptionally high and hazardous to health.
According to the study, which appears in the center's new report "Tobacco Smoke Pollution in Oklahoma Workplaces," the average particulate level measured in restaurant smoking rooms was beyond the hazardous extreme based on levels established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The level found in bars was even worse.
Diners who are skeptical of the food safety practices in ethnic restaurants have new research to back up some of their assumptions.
In a study of independently owned restaurants in 14 Kansas counties, Kansas State University researchers found a significantly higher number of food safety violations in ethnic restaurants than in nonethnic restaurants. The next step for their research is to understand the reasons for these differences and to work alongside restaurant operators to remedy the problems.
Does Dragons' Den, Alan Sugar, Richard Branson and the way other celebrity entrepreneurs are depicted by the media show what it's really like to start up and run businesses?
The answer's no, according to most respondents in the two latest in-depth surveys of small business owners and business advisers from Nottingham University Business School.
ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Data from a study conducted by the Battelle Memorial Institute shows Mayo Clinic is responsible for $22 billion in economic impact nationwide, including $9.6 billion in Minnesota. The $9.6 billion impact in Minnesota is larger than that of the hotel and lodging industry ($1.8 billion), motor vehicle manufacturing ($3.9 billion) or professional sports ($717 million).
A paper published in this week's issue of PLoS Medicine provides a substantial new resource for the developers of guidelines of the reporting of health research. The authors of the paper have been key in the development of many of the most important health research guidelines published over the past few years, including the CONSORT guidelines for clinical trials and the PRISMA guidelines for systematic reviews.
California's coastal fog has decreased significantly over the past 100 years, potentially endangering coast redwood trees dependent on cool, humid summers, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, scientists.
It is unclear whether this is part of a natural cycle of the result of human activity, but the change could affect not only the redwoods, but the entire redwood ecosystem, the scientists say.
Westchester, Ill. –A study in the Feb. 15 issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine shows that sleepiness at the wheel and poor sleep quality significantly increase the risk of motor vehicle accidents in adolescents.
ST. PAUL, Minn. – Watching TV medical shows might not be the best way to learn what to do when someone has a seizure. Researchers screened the most popular medical dramas and found that doctors and nurses on the shows responded inappropriately to seizures almost half the time, according to a study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 62nd Annual Meeting in Toronto April 10 to April 17, 2010.