Culture | Page 2788 | Science Codex

Do we need a 'Title IX' for women in cancer research?

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Women are under-represented in clinical cancer research published in high-impact journals, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Taking into account the incidence of particular types of cancer among women, studies included a smaller proportion of women than should be expected. The analysis looked specifically at studies of cancer types that were not gender specific, including colon cancer, oral cancers, lung cancer, brain tumors and lymphomas.

Racial variations in excessive daytime sleepiness depend on measurement

WESTCHESTER, Ill. – According to a research abstract that will be presented on Monday, June 8, at SLEEP 2009, the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, white Americans are more likely to report experiencing excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) more days per month than Asians, African Americans and Hispanics, but African Americans experience more severe EDS.

Is television watching before bedtime a bad idea?

WESTCHESTER, Ill. – According to a research abstract that will be presented on Monday, June 8, at SLEEP 2009, the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, television watching may be an important determinant of bedtime, and may contribute to chronic sleep debt.

Comparing mass transit - more than just emissions need to be considered

Trains, planes, buses and automobiles do not only effect the environment via their exhaust pipes. There is a full life-cycle of processes associated with getting from a to b that we rarely acknowledge.

Published today in IOP Publishing's Environmental Research Letters, Monday, June 8, 2009, researchers from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, have created a framework to help us calculate the true environmental cost of travel.

'Global health' defined

Despite increasingly frequent references to global health from media, scholars and students, the term is rarely defined. And when it is defined, it is often merely a rephrased definition of public health or an updated definition of international health. What, then, is global health?

In a commentary in The Lancet, Jeffrey Koplan, MD, MPH, and colleagues from the Consortium of Universities for Global Health raise this question and offer a definition of global health. Likewise, the authors discuss what it means for global health to be genuinely global.

Asthma rates and where you live

Chicago, Ill. --- Neighborhoods with restaurants, entertainment, cultural facilities and ethnic diversity have lower asthma rates in the city of Chicago than neighborhoods where residents are less likely to move, and where there are more churches and not-for-profit facilities.

Middle-aged women experience more stress but have lower blood pressure

Both blood pressure and serum lipid levels have improved in Swedish middle-aged women during the past 30 years. Levels of perceived mental stress, however, have increased significantly. These are the of a thesispresented at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Risks of sharing personal genetic information online need more study

STANFORD, Calif. — With just $399 and a bit of saliva in a cup, consumers can learn about their genetic risk for diseases from breast cancer to diabetes. Now, thanks to social networking sites set up by personal genomics companies, they can also share that information with family, friends and even strangers on the Internet.

Bonding over a similar genetic background sounds relatively harmless. But according to bioethicists from the Stanford University School of Medicine, sharing genetic information online raises a host of ethical questions.

REDD payments could protect orangutans, pygmy elephants in Borneo

JAKARTA (5 June 2009)—A new report published today provides compelling evidence that paying to conserve billions of tons of carbon stored in tropical forests could also protect orangutans, pygmy elephants, and other wildlife at risk of extinction. The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Conservation Letters, is one of the first to offer quantitative evidence linking the drive to reduce carbon emissions from forests with the push to preserve threatened mammal biodiversity.

Study: Illegal fishing harming present and future New England groundfish fisheries

Solomons, Md. (June 4, 2009) – Weak enforcement combined with fishermen facing serious economic hardships are leading to widespread violations of fisheries regulations along the Northeastern United States coast. This pattern of noncompliance threatens the success of new fisheries management measures put in place to protect and restore fish stocks, according to a new study published online this week in the journal Marine Policy.

Ankle replacements - when insurance has to cover everything, it is no longer insurance

MAYWOOD, Il. -- It's been a decade since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first total ankle-replacement system for patients with severe ankle arthritis but several insurance companies still deny coverage, Loyola University Health System orthopaedic surgeon Dr. Michael Pinzur writes in a FootForum commentary in Foot & Ankle International, the official journal of the American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society.

And that's bad, he contends, apparently not realizing that insurance is supposed to cover the important stuff.

Queen's international research tests language tests

Unique Queen's University research will shed light on how motivation and anxiety affects language test scores, and on the relationship between the test scores and the social and educational contexts of the tests.

Education professor Liying Cheng, underscores the importance of understanding the power awarded to language tests in certain decision making processes around the world.

'Bullying', though ill defined, affected 14 percent of workers over past 6 months

Although it is a relatively widespread phenomenon, the experts have still not been able to come up with an all-encompassing and precise definition of workplace abuse or bullying. Basing their work on previous literature, David González, of the High Court of Justice of Madrid and José Luís Graña, of the Faculty of Psychology at the Complutense University, have defined it in their study as a "process of systematic and repeated aggression by a person or group towards a workmate, subordinate or superior". Their research has been published in the latest issue of Psicothema.

Illness, medical bills linked to nearly two-thirds of bankruptcies

Medical problems contributed to nearly two-thirds (62.1 percent) of all bankruptcies in 2007, according to a study in the August issue of the American Journal of Medicine that will be published online Thursday. The data were collected prior to the current economic downturn and hence likely understate the current burden of financial suffering. Between 2001 and 2007, the proportion of all bankruptcies attributable to medical problems rose by 49.6 percent. The authors' previous 2001 findings have been widely cited by policy leaders, including President Obama.

Health and life insurance companies hold billions in tobacco stocks

More than a decade after Harvard researchers first revealed that life and health insurance companies were major investors in tobacco stocks – prompting calls upon them to divest – the insurance industry has yet to kick the habit, they say.

A new article on insurance company holdings, published in today's New England Journal of Medicine, shows that U.S., Canadian and U.K.-based insurance firms hold at least $4.4 billion of investments in companies whose subsidiaries manufacture cigarettes, cigars, chewing tobacco and related products.