Culture

WOODS HOLE, Mass. -- An assessment of coastal change over the past 150 years has found 68 percent of beaches in the New England and Mid-Atlantic region are eroding, according to a U.S. Geological Survey report released today.

Scientists studied more than 650 miles of the New England and Mid-Atlantic coasts and found the average rate of coastal change – taking into account beaches that are both eroding and prograding -- was negative 1.6 feet per year. Of those beaches eroding, the most extreme case exceeded 60 feet per year.

Americans and Canadians are getting vastly different search results when they look up prescription drug information online, says a study by researchers at the University of British Columbia.

Residents of the United States searching on Google for both brand and generic drug names get directed to the government-run National Library of Medicine. However, Canadians performing the same searches end up getting Wikipedia for generic drug searches, and drug company sites for brand searches, according to the study, published online yesterday by the Annals of Pharmacotherapy.

New research determined that an increase in the severity of hallux valgus, or bunion deformity, progressively reduced both general and foot-specific health related quality of life (HRQOL). Bunion deformity was found in 36% of the study population and occurred more frequently in women and older individuals. Pain in other parts of the body beyond the foot was associated with increased bunion severity.

Civil protests, from peaceful sit-ins at the Pentagon to violent riots in Cairo, nonetheless share some common characteristics. To study how protests evolve in public spaces, Dr. Tali Hatuka, an architect and head of Tel Aviv University's Laboratory of Contemporary Urban Design, has dissected some of the world's most publicized protests — those in Washington, Istanbul, Tel Aviv, Beijing, and Leipzig.

Older women who used bisphosphonates (medications that prevent loss of bone mass) for five years or more were more likely to experience "atypical" fractures involving the femoral shaft (bone in the leg that extends from the hip to the knee) or subtrochanteric (fractures in the bone just below the hip joint), compared to women with less usage. However, the absolute risk of these "atypical" fractures was low and bisphosphonate use was associated with a reduced risk of typical osteoporotic fractures, according to a study in the February 23 issue of JAMA.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha have reported that markedly higher intake of vitamin D is needed to reach blood levels that can prevent or markedly cut the incidence of breast cancer and several other major diseases than had been originally thought. The findings are published February 21 in the journal Anticancer Research

Athens, Ga. – The amount the public will pay to prevent the death of a child may be twice that of an adult, according to a new University of Georgia study that asked 199 individuals how much they would pay to prevent a death from child abuse or neglect.

The research, published in the March edition of the American Journal of Public Health, found that respondents were willing to pay an average of $150 to reduce the mortality risk associated with child maltreatment by one in 10,000.