Culture

  • Among kidney disease patients receiving pre-dialysis care in a universal healthcare system, black patients experienced a faster progression to kidney failure than whites.
  • The faster decline in kidney function among black compared with white patients was predominantly present in patients with diabetes and in patients with more advanced kidney dysfunction.
  • Findings may help explain why blacks are more prone to develop kidney failure than whites.

Bethesda, MD – The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) applauds the Senate Appropriations Committee for approving a fiscal year (FY) 2014 Labor, Health and Human Services (LHHS)Appropriations bill that provides $30.95 billion for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). "The Senate funding level for NIH replaces the funding lost due to sequestration and is a critical step in the right direction," said FASEB President Margaret K. Offermann, MD, PhD.

Sad music might actually evoke positive emotions reveals a new study by Japanese researchers published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Psychology. The findings help to explain why people enjoy listening to sad music, say Ai Kawakami and colleagues from Tokyo University of the Arts and the RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan.

During the Great Recession, high school students became more concerned about others and the environment, psychologists at San Diego State University and University of California, Los Angeles report today.

During the Great Recession, high school students in the U.S. became more concerned about others and the environment, psychologists at UCLA and San Diego State University report in a new study.

The research, published July 11 in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, focused on survey data collected on high school seniors during three time periods: the global recession (2008-10), just before the recession (2004-06) and the earliest period for which data were available (1976-78).

CHICAGO, IL – Anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction (ACLR) surgery is a common knee injury procedure, but the overall incidence rate of having to go through it again within 24 months is 6 times greater than someone who has never had an ACL tear, according to researchers presenting their work today at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine's (AOSSM) Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL.

David Wallinga from Keep Antibiotcs Working: the Campaign to End Antibiotic Overuse in Animal Agriculture, believes that physicians and policymakers have "overlooked the critical role played by the ongoing overuse of antibiotics in livestock and poultry."

He understands the interest in creating a pipeline of new antibiotics, but says overall reductions in antibiotic use "should come first."

He points to data showing that, in 2009-11, 72% of all US sales of antimicrobials comprised those routinely added to water or animal feed.

Personal tastes in music have little to do with how we keep time to a tune while walking, according to research published July 10 by Marc Leman and colleagues from Ghent University, Belgium in the open access journal PLOS ONE.

Most people synchronize their steps to the beat of their tunes when they listen to music on a walk. In the current study, researchers found that even when excerpts of music had identical tempo and beat, other acoustic features influenced walkers' stride and speed.

Today, the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL) announced that its scientists have successfully completed the first full-scale simulation of an operating nuclear reactor. CASL is modeling nuclear reactors on supercomputers to help researchers better understand reactor performance with much higher reliability than previously available methods, with the goal of ultimately increasing power output, extending reactor life, and reducing waste.

A new study of HIV infection by UC San Francisco researchers points to changes in intestinal bacteria as a possible explanation for why successfully treated HIV patients nonetheless prematurely experience life-shortening chronic diseases.

These changes in gut bacteria may perpetuate inflammation initially triggered by the body's immune response to HIV, according to the study, reported online July 10 in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

AURORA, Colo. (July 10, 2013) – Rates of angiography and percutaneous coronary interventions were significantly lower among Medicare Advantage beneficiaries when compared to those covered by Medicare fee-for-service, according to a study by a University of Colorado School of Medicine physician published in the July 10 issue of JAMA.

The study, which included nearly 6 million Medicare Advantage and Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries from 12 states, also found that geographic variation in procedure rates was substantial for both payment types.

In the 2012 presidential election, seven out of 10 Latino immigrants voted for President Obama. As news pundits dissected the defeat of Mitt Romney, they dismissed the Latino vote as unattainable for the Republican Party.

But University of Nebraska-Lincoln political scientist Sergio Wals says that's not necessarily the case. In a new study published in the journal Electoral Studies, Wals found that Mexican immigrants who are more politically invested are center or center-right in their political ideologies.

Today's smartphones allow for increased opportunities for activities traditionally defined as sedentary behaviors, such as surfing the internet, emailing and playing video games. However, researchers Jacob Barkley and Andrew Lepp, faculty members in the College of Education, Health and Human Services at Kent State University, linked high cell phone use to poor fitness in college students.

WASHINGTON — Emergency physicians and other emergency department staff were fairly accurate in assessing which patients were drug-seekers in the emergency department, changing their prescribing plans for less than 10 percent of patients after consulting an objective computerized state prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP). The analysis of emergency providers' prescribing patterns and clinical factors associated with suspecting drug-seeking in the ER were published online yesterday in Annals of Emergency Medicine ("Clinician Impression vs.

Alexandria, VA -- Scientists have recently confirmed the existence of an impact crater buried below the town of Decorah, Iowa. Scientists first discovered what they thought resembled a crater in 2008, but now it has been corroborated by an airborne geophysical survey and hydrology surveys. Scientists estimate the diameter of the crater at 5.5 kilometers wide, nearly five times the size of the Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona.