Culture

The new year could be a safer one for workers. A law passed by Congress last October will increase civil fines for violators of workplace safety standards. And to boost accountability further, the Departments of Justice and Labor are teaming up to couple worker safety with harsher criminal penalties, according to an article in Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society.

CHICAGO: Expectant mothers who sustain a traumatic injury and receive care at a hospital with a designated trauma center experience better outcomes than those treated at a non-trauma hospital. They are less likely to experience preterm labor (give birth prematurely), have a low birth weight infant, or have meconium at delivery (a sign of fetal distress), according to new study results published online in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons in advance of print publication later this year.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (January 13, 2016) --The Kogod School of Business at American University announces the launch of the Kogod Greater Washington Millennial Index, a research project initiated to find out what Millennials want in a place to live and work, and how the greater Washington area measures up. The index is the latest project in the school's Business in the Capital initiative, which works to bring meaningful and actionable insights to Washington area business leaders.

Regorafenib (trade name: Stivarga) has been approved since August 2013 for adults with metastatic colorectal cancer in whom previous treatments are no longer effective or for whom these alternatives are not an option. After a first early benefit assessment in January 2014, the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) now reexamined whether the drug offers an added benefit over the appropriate comparator therapy. This new assessment was conducted because a limitation of the corresponding decision by the Federal Joint Commission (G-BA) expired in July 2015.

Nivolumab (trade name: Opdivo) has been approved since June 2015 for adults with advanced melanoma. The German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) had examined its added benefit in a dossier assessment completed in October 2015.

PISCATAWAY, NJ - Young people's exposure to alcohol advertisements on television could be greatly reduced if alcohol companies improved their use of so-called no-buy lists, according to a study in the January issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

Alcohol manufacturers are self-regulated when it comes to advertising: In 2003, the industry set guidelines that limit advertising to media that have a primarily adult audience -- with at least 71.6 percent of the audience being age 21 or older.

A set of "no buy" list criteria developed by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health could greatly reduce underage viewers' exposure to alcohol advertising on cable TV, a new study finds. "No-buy" lists refer to lists of television programming that advertisers avoid in order to comply with self-regulatory marketing guidelines.

The diet of Mexican immigrant children in the U.S. is different from what their mothers eat, according to Penn State sociologists, and that may mean kids are trading in the generally healthy diet of their moms for less nutritious American fare.

This change in children's diets may be related to other research that shows high obesity prevalence among children of Mexican immigrants, said Molly Dondero, a postdoctoral fellow at the Population Research Institute.

DALLAS, Jan. 12, 2016 - Women with heart failure benefit from implantable cardiac defibrillators as much as men, according to new research in Circulation: Heart Failure, an American Heart Association journal.

AUGUSTA, Ga. - A standardized treatment approach that starts with good screening and ends with patients going home to well-prepared caregivers, means outpatient thyroid surgery is safe for the vast majority of patients, including the elderly and super-elderly, physician-scientists say.

An online tool combining results of common medical tests can accurately estimate the risk of whether someone with chronic kidney disease will develop kidney failure in the next two to five years, an international team of researchers led by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has found.

Among adults with Clostridium difficile infection that is recurrent or not responsive to treatment, the use of frozen compared with fresh fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) did not result in a significantly lower rate of resolution of diarrhea, indicating that frozen FMT may be a reasonable treatment option for these patients, according to a study in the January 12 issue of JAMA.

Kidney failure risk equations developed in a Canadian population showed accuracy in predicting the 2-year and 5-year probability of kidney failure in patients with chronic kidney disease from over 30 countries with a wide range of variation in age, sex and race, according to a study in the January 12 issue of JAMA.

ST. LOUIS - Opioids may cause short-term improvement in mood, but long-term use imposes risk of new-onset depression, a Saint Louis University study shows.

According to Statistics Sweden, 30 percent of all parents of young children in Sweden separate. Researchers at the University of Gothenburg have mapped the most important factors behind the separations and divorces - and offer five tips that can save the relationship.

According to 2012 statistics from Statistics Sweden, one out of three Swedish couples that have small children get separated. The average age of the first child at the time of the separation or divorce is 4 years and 8 months.