Culture

Merely observing someone publicly blame an individual in an organization for a problem – even when the target is innocent – greatly increases the odds that the practice of blaming others will spread with the tenacity of the H1N1 flu, according to new research from the USC Marshall School of Business and Stanford University.

• Treatment for alcohol use disorders (AUDs) and tuberculosis (TB) is rarely integrated, even though the two diseases have a high co-occurrence.
• American and Russian researchers have jointly designed and are monitoring an innovative program that will deliver alcohol treatment as part of routine TB care.
• The trial study is continuing.

BOSTON—November 19, 2009—Barack Obama promised to halve poverty within ten years. His Republican opponent, John McCain, vowed to "make the eradication of poverty a top priority of the McCain Administration." Even in the current economic situation, in developed countries, this kind of rhetoric about cutting "poverty" is misleadingly outmoded—because it implicitly suggests that government income transfers can be the vehicle for achieving substantial reductions in poverty.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Effective communication of health news is needed to raise awareness and encourage behavior changes in populations who experience health disparities, or inequalities in health status, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Drug dependency is a recurrent but treatable kind of addiction. However, not all people who are drug dependent progress in the same way once they stop taking drugs. A new study shows that, in the case of cocaine, a high score on the so-called 'scale of craving', an antisocial personality type and previous heroin abuse are the factors most commonly involved in people falling back into the habit.

While most of us would never willingly consume a highly endangered species, doing so might be as easy as plucking sushi from a bento box. New genetic detective work from the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics at the American Museum of Natural History shows that bluefin tuna is routinely plated in sushi bars sampled in New York and Colorado. A quarter of what was labeled as tuna on sushi menus was bluefin, and some was even escolar, a waxy, buttery fish often labeled "white tuna" that is banned for sale in Japan and Italy because it can cause gastrointestinal distress.

CHICAGO --- Many women don't quit smoking because they are afraid of gaining weight. That's because nicotine suppresses the appetite and boosts a smoker's metabolism.

But a new meta-analysis (results of several studies) shows that women who quit smoking while receiving treatment for weight control are better able to control their weight gain and are more successful at quitting cigarettes.

The finding disproves current clinical guidelines that say trying to diet and quit smoking at the same time will sabotage efforts to ditch cigarettes.

Spain and Latin American countries have an opportunity to take the lead in two small biotechnology sectors. Researchers from the University of Valencia (UV), working together with the IDICHUS Foundation, have studied the productive fabric of the Spanish biotechnology industry. Their conclusion is that Spain's food and plant sectors have more clout than those in English-speaking countries.

Biotechnology as applied to food and plants has been overlooked by the leading countries in this sector – the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and the Nordic countries.

Search engine use is not just part of our daily routines; it is also becoming part of our learning process, according to Penn State researchers.

Scientists at the University of Granada have identified and characterized for the first time different antioxidant compounds from foods such as olive oil, honey, walnuts and a medicinal herb called Teucrium polium. They have used two new techniques, capillary electrophoresis and high resolution liquid chromatography, that have enabled them to identify and quantify a great part of the phenolic compounds contained in these foods.

A nutritionist in Nigeria says that malnutrition and iron deficiency in schoolchildren could be reduced in her country by baking up snail pie. In a research paper to be published in the International Journal of Food Safety, Nutrition and Public Health, she explains snail is not only cheaper and more readily available than beef but contains more protein.

Like the paperless office, the smart home has been a long time coming, but a report published in the International Journal of Internet Protocol Technology, suggests that radio tags coupled with mobile communications devices could soon provide seamless multimedia services to the home.

ATLANTA / SAN DIEGO (November 19, 2009) – At the annual meeting of the Sexual Medicine Society of North America (SMSNA), Inc. in San Diego, Sciele Pharma, Inc., a Shionogi Company and Plethora Solutions Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Plethora Solutions Holdings PLC ("Plethora" – AIM:PLE)., today presented data from its second positive pivotal study of PSD502 for the treatment of premature ejaculation (PE).

Click here to watch a Skype-video interview with Anil Dash.Read a transcript of the interview here.Dash's keynote presentation at the Web 2.0 event at 2:35 p.m. Wednesday, 18 November is expected to be available via live Web stream.

Log onto:http://blog.web2expo.com/2009/11/we?re-livestreaming-and-recording-web-20-expo/.

In an advance with overtones of Star Trek phasers and other sci-fi ray guns, scientists in Canada are reporting development of an internal on-off "switch" that paralyzes animals when exposed to a beam of ultraviolet light. The animals stay paralyzed even when the light is turned off. When exposed to ordinary light, the animals become unparalyzed and wake up. Their study appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS). It reports the first demonstration of such a light-activated switch in animals.