Culture

Bethesda, MD—An original and progressive report on health information technology (HIT) vendors, their customers and patients, published online today, makes ground-breaking recommendations for new practices that target the reduction or elimination of tensions that currently mar relationships between many HIT vendors and their customers, specifically with regard to indemnity and error management of HIT systems.

Think New York is an exceptional city? New Yorkers not only think that, they think beyond the Hudson River there exists only some vast, radioactive wasteland filled with people that want to live in New York City. But The Big Apple is just about average for a city of its size, yet San Francisco is exceptional; its inhabitants are wealthier, more productive, more innovative, and subject to fewer crimes than you would expect, given its size.

Diabetes experts at a meeting convened by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) took the next step in advancing efforts toward the development of an artificial pancreas: putting forth clinical recommendations to ensure the safe and effective testing of artificial pancreas technology in real-life situations. We are pleased at today's meeting there was a strong consensus among leading clinicians, researchers and industry leaders regarding the path toward outpatient studies for both low-glucose suspend and artificial pancreas systems.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Before the U.S. Census Bureau releases its official state-level population counts to Congress on Dec. 31, a University of Michigan demographer offers projections of likely state winners and losers.

But she also cautions that there are likely to be plenty of surprises.

What factors contribute to poor people in developing countries lifting themselves out of poverty?

A paper by economists Anan Pawasutipaisit of Thammasat University and Robert M. Townsend of MIT provides important insights into what kinds of households might be most effective at moving themselves out of poverty and how they are able do it.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – In modern culture, it is not considered socially acceptable for married people to have extramarital sexual partners. However, in some Amazonian cultures, extramarital sexual affairs were common, and people believed that when a woman became pregnant, each of her sexual partners would be considered part-biological father. Now, a new University of Missouri study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found that up to 70 percent of Amazonian cultures may have believed in the principle of multiple paternity.

Manufacturer recalls of toys, promotional drinking glasses, and other children's products constitute an ongoing "toxic toys crisis" that requires banning potentially harmful ingredients in these products and other changes in policy and practices. That's the conclusion of a new analysis in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology, a semi-monthly journal.

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.

Updated NIST software uses combination testing to catch bugs fast and easy

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have released an updated version of a computer system testing tool that can cut costs by more efficiently finding flaws. A tutorial on using the tool accompanies the new release.

Probiotic bacteria given as therapies for diarrhoea reduce the length of time sufferers are affected and lessen the chance of episodes continuing for more than four days. These are the findings of a new systematic review by Cochrane researchers.

While policy and research traditionally have focused on universities' contributions to technology transfer - such as patents, licences and spin-outs - the findings show that the impact from knowledge exchange is much more wide-ranging. Survey data revealed that business motivations to enter into partnerships with researchers include service development, human resource management, training and marketing.

Young children who don't like school are more likely to be involved in underage drinking and sexual activity. A study reported in BioMed Central's open access journal Substance Abuse, Treatment, Prevention and Policy, has found that pupils' general wellbeing and specific satisfaction with school were both associated with the incidence of risky behaviors.

Few of the young women who are eligible for the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine take it, according to research presented at the Ninth Annual AACR Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research Conference, held Nov. 7-10. What's more, many of the teens who begin treatment do not complete the recommended three-dose regimen.

HPV is the most commonly transmitted virus among adolescent girls in the United States. At any given time, 29.5 percent of sexually active 14- to 19-year-old teenagers are infected. Persistent infection with certain HPV types may lead to cervical cancer.

A team of international researchers has resolved the longstanding issue of the origins of the people who introduced farming to Europe some 8,000 years ago.

A detailed genetic study of one of the first farming communities in Europe, from central Germany, reveals marked similarities with populations living in the Ancient Near East (modern-day Turkey, Iraq and other countries) rather than those from Europe.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Some scholars estimate that presenteeism, a relatively recent buzzword that applies to people who are less productive at work because of health issues, costs employers as much as three times the dollar amount as absenteeism in terms of lost productivity.