Culture

Suffering from chronic medical conditions and engaging in unhealthy behaviors are known risk factors for early death, but findings from a longitudinal study of over 6,000 adults suggests that certain psychological factors may be even stronger predictors of how long we'll live.

The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Appropriate data collection, staff training, LGBT patient education, and nondiscrimination policies are all needed now that the federal government has required that electronic health records (EHR) systems certified under the Meaningful Use Incentive Program be capable of collecting information on patients' sexual orientation (gay, lesbian, or bisexual) and gender identity, "an historic move that will advance health" for the LGBT community, according to an article in LGBT Health.

In the article "Police Violence: A Two Way Street"," retired police officer and psychologist Matthew Logan, PhD, explores the "untold story" behind accounts of police violence in the media. He provides insights into why a small percentage of violent incidents involving the police dominate the headlines, encourages greater public airing of the police perspective, and predicts how policing might change in the new climate of hatred and distrust. The article appears in the Journal Violence and Gender.

For all the media attention they've been getting lately, self-driving cars come with many unknowns and potential obstacles to safe driving. A critical issue is the relative lack of research on the role of the human in the system. This human factors component may represent more daunting challenges than technological, legal, and security concerns of self-driving cars.

Women who prefer physically formidable and dominant mates (PPFDM) tend to feel more at risk of crime regardless of the situation or risk factors present, according to research from the University of Leicester.

Previous research suggests that women who grow up in high-crime areas and perceive they are at risk of criminal victimisation find dominant men more appealing, perhaps because of the protection they can offer.

Arby's, the national sandwich chain, has unveiled plans to extend an olive branch to vegetarians on Leap Day. On Feb. 29th only, Arby's will take a leap by offering the company's first ever vegetarian menu - by removing all of the things that make the sandwiches good. Namely, the meat.

Paid parental leave is linked to a lower rate of kids' admission to hospital for head injury, finds research published in the journal Injury Prevention.

Deliberately inflicted head trauma is a leading cause of fatal child abuse in the US, with most of the victims aged between 9 and 20 weeks -- a developmental period that usually coincides with prolonged bouts of crying.

NEW YORK, NY (February 25, 2016)--When hearing loss becomes so severe that hearing aids no longer help, a cochlear implant not only amplifies sounds but also lets people hear speech clearly.

Music is a different story.

"I've pretty much given up listening to music and being able to enjoy it," says Prudence Garcia-Renart, a musician who gave up playing the piano a few years ago.

AMHERST, Mass. - In a new paper, researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Oxford University describe a new, more general law for predicting the wavelength of complex wrinkle patterns, including those found on curved surfaces, plus experimental results to support it.

The work is expected to help materials scientists to use wrinkles to sculpt surface topography, or to use the wrinkles on surfaces to infer the properties of the underlying materials such as textiles and biological tissues.

New research led by researchers at the University of Birmingham, alongside teams from the universities of Cambridge, Leeds and Manchester, has identified key factors that drive blood cell development by recapitulating this process in a culture dish. Cells with the ability to give rise to blood are normally specified in the early embryo over a number of developmental stages and eventually form blood stem cells that are maintained for life and generate trillions of blood cells every day.

Biological anthropologists have discovered a new way of examining the fragile teeth of children who lived between the 11th and 15th centuries without damaging them.

By using 3D microscopic imaging, researchers from the universities of Kent (UK) and Indianapolis (USA) have been able to safely reconstruct the diet of children who would have lived next door to Canterbury Cathedral when Chaucer was writing his famous Tales.

Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) is a the most common form of arthritis in children and affects approximately 50,000 individuals in the United States alone. Previous research suggested that autoimmune responses cause JIA, but the specific antigens that are responsible for driving autoimmunity have not been identified. In this month's issue of JCI Insight, Laura Santambrogio of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and her colleagues report that the molecular chaperone transthyretin (TTR) acts an antigen that stimulates B and T cell immune responses.

A study published online ahead of print in the journal Medical Care shows that over a recent 10-year period, the rate of metastatic colorectal cancer patients older than age 75 receiving three or more treatments increased from 2 percent to 53 percent. During this period, 1-year treatment cost increased 32 percent to reach an estimated $2.2 billion annually. However, median survival for these patients increased by only one month.

It is commonly believed that companies are only committed to environmental and social issues if this contributes to increase their profits. A new study now shows that this stereotype is not true at least for large companies in developed countries. The driving force behind sustainability management activities of large companies is mainly the pursuit of social acceptance. Conversely, profit maximisation plays a subordinate role. This counterintuitive result of a broad empirical study has recently been published in the Journal of Business Ethics by Prof. Dr.

The new journal Cardiovascular Innovations and Applications (CVIA) has just published its second issue, with a special focus on Electrophysiology. CVIA is the official journal of the Great Wall International Congress of Cardiology (GW-ICC) and its first issue was published in October 2015 to coincide with the 26th GW-ICC in Beijing, China.

The CVIA Special Issue on Electrophysiology has been Guest Edited by Dr. Jamie B. Conti of the University of Florida and brings together contributions from leading cardiologists from the United States and China.