Culture

When it comes to advising obese patients, blacks receive less weight reduction and exercise counseling from physicians than their white counterparts. This is according to a recent study conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who examined the impact of patient and doctor race concordance on weight-related counseling. The results are featured in the January 2011 online issue of Obesity.

GALVESTON, Texas — A new study by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston reveals that the prevalence of hypertension in older Mexican-Americans living in the Southwest region of the United States has increased slightly in the last decade.

Researchers suspect the rise is due, in part, to the increase in diabetes and obesity.

Although hypertension, or high blood pressure, is one of the most common diseases in the United States, affecting more than 72 million Americans, it is one of the most manageable risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

What is it that makes you want to return to a restaurant again and again?

The food? The service? Atmosphere?

Sure.

But according to research spearheaded by John Antun, associate professor in the Department of Retail, Hospitality and Tourism and director of the Culinary Institute at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Robert E. Frash Jr., chair of the HRT department at the College of Charleston (S.C.), there are two more factors that must be added to mix: the social experience and the availability of healthy menu options.

NASA research finds 2010 tied for warmest year on record

WASHINGTON -- Global surface temperatures in 2010 tied 2005 as the warmest on record, according to an analysis released Wednesday by researchers at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York.

Quantum quirk contained

Researchers at the University of Calgary, in Canada, collaborating with the University of Paderborn, in Germany, are working on a way to make quantum networks a reality and have published their findings in the journal Nature. A similar finding by a group at the University of Geneva, in Switzerland is reported in the same issue.

Adding customer service representatives to a computerized radiology workflow management system means improved patient and referring physician satisfaction and increased radiologist efficiency, an analysis of a program at Children's Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati finds.

Seven customer service representatives now staff the radiology reading room from 7:00 am – 11:00 pm daily and are responsible for ensuring that referring physicians receive completed radiology reports quickly.

Snap an image of friends in front of a window curtain and the camera captures the people — and invisible blood stains splattered on the curtain during a murder. Sound unlikely? Chemists from the University of South Carolina are reporting development of a camera with that ability to see the invisible, and more. Called multimode imaging in the thermal infrared, the new technology could find uses in crime scene investigations and elsewhere, they say in a series of three reports in ACS' Analytical Chemistry, a semi-monthly journal.

New software has been developed at Queen Mary, University of London's Centre for Digital Music, giving drummers the freedom to speed up or slow down the pace of any pre-programmed music, the material following their lead.

It means that drummers will no longer have to keep time with a click track and the set beat of pre-recorded tracks that are used during many live performances and studio sessions.

ATHENS, Ohio (Jan. 12, 2011) – Some school social workers report that they don't feel equipped to handle incidents of cyberbullying among teens.

Marketing efforts that encourage mixing caffeinated "energy" drinks with alcohol often try to sway young people to believe that caffeine will offset the sedating effects of alcohol and increase alertness and stamina.

But a new study led by researchers from the Boston University School of Public Health [BUSPH] and the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies at Brown University has found that the addition of caffeine to alcohol -- mixing Red Bull with vodka, for example -- has no effect on enhancing performance on a driving test or improving sustained attention or reaction times.

New software has been developed that gives drummers the freedom to speed up or slow down the pace of the music with any pre-programmed material following their lead.

It means that drummers will no longer have to keep time with a click track and the set beat of pre-recorded tracks that are used during many live performances and studio sessions.

January 11, 2011 – (BRONX, NY) – Intrauterine devices (IUDs) for contraception are safe and effective, but only a small fraction of women in the United States use them.

Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced doctor who claimed a link between MMR and autism, planned secret businesses intended to make huge sums of money, in Britain and America, from his now-discredited allegations.

The Wakefield scheme is exposed today in the second part of a BMJ series of special reports, "Secrets of the MMR scare", by investigative journalist Brian Deer. Last week we revealed the scientific fraud behind the appearance of a link between the vaccine and autism. Now Deer follows the money.

One dose of the pandemic flu vaccines used in seven European countries conferred good protection against pandemic H1N1 influenza in the 2009-10 season, especially in people aged less than 65 years and in those without any chronic diseases. These findings from a study funded by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and coordinated by EpiConcept, Paris, France, published in this week's PLoS Medicine, give an indication of the vaccine effectiveness for the influenza A (H1N1) 2009 strain included in the 2010-11 seasonal vaccines.