Culture

NEW YORK (October 14, 2015) A substantial fraction of the Earth is now legally protected from damaging human activities. Does this protection matter? In other words, has it made a difference in terms of maintaining or enhancing biological diversity and ecosystem services? Has it harmed or helped the people who live in and around these areas?

Eighty-one percent of US science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) university faculty members are men. To address this gender disparity, an interdisciplinary team from Montana State University, led by Jessi L. Smith, devised a three-step search intervention, the results of which are published in BioScience. The approach, based on self-determination theory, was successful.

CLEVELAND, Ohio (October 14, 2015)--Millions of women may likely be sleep-deprived. It's already a known fact that women are more predisposed to insomnia. Now a new study presented at the 2015 Annual Meeting of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS) earlier this month suggests that perimenopausal women have an even greater risk for developing insomnia. Considering that perimenopause will affect roughly 500 million women within the next decade, that's a lot of tired women.

In an important examination of the effect of the Affordable Care Act, researchers have determined that low-income Virginians with HIV had better outcomes when enrolled in Affordable Care Act healthcare plans. The study is believed to be the first to compare Affordable Care Act outcomes with the previous standard of care for this vulnerable patient population.

(Boston)--It is now possible to determine which patients have an increased chance of one day needing life support with mechanical ventilation. Researchers have developed a simple tool to predict an individual's five-year risk of requiring this care.

The study, which appears in Journal of the American Geriatric Society, may assist physicians in facilitating discussions around advanced care planning with patients and their families.

LOS ANGELES - In the kidney, injured cells can be kicked into reparative mode by a gene called Sox9, according to a new paper published in Cell Reports.

Government entities are less likely to comply with certain federal environmental regulations than are similar entities owned by private companies, according to a new study co-authored by an Indiana University researcher.

And regulatory authorities are less vigorous in enforcing the rules when they are regulating other governments, the study finds. Publicly owned facilities are less likely to face fines or other sanctions for violations than are those owned and run by private firms.

Women who undergo implant based female sterilization have a significantly heightened risk of reoperation following complications, suggests a large study published in The BMJ this week.

Female sterilization is one of the most common contraception methods worldwide. Laparoscopic sterilization has been the primary method for decades. It is a surgical procedure that clips, stitches or burns the fallopian tubes to prevent pregnancy.

DALLAS, Oct. 13, 2015 - Young women are less likely than young men to be prescribed or to fill their medication after a heart attack, according to new research published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

It is recommended that both male and female heart attack survivors take ACE inhibitors, beta-blockers and statins to prevent another heart attack. Yet studies have documented that rates of medication use to prevent a recurrent heart attack are lower among women than men.

Despite the quadrupling of heroin overdose deaths over the past decade and a dramatic rise in deaths from prescription painkillers, the percentage of people getting treatment for their opioid abuse and dependence has remained the same, new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health research suggests.

Writing in the Oct. 13 Journal of the American Medical Association, the researchers say that while more money has been spent on treatment in recent years, the resources necessary to ensure wider access to treatment haven't kept up with the burgeoning demand.

From 2003 to 2013, the percentage of nonmedical use of prescription opioids decreased among adults in the U.S., while the prevalence of prescription opioid use disorders, frequency of use, and related deaths increased, according to a study in the October 13 issue of JAMA.

Early physical therapy for recent-onset low back pain resulted in statistically significant improvement in disability compared to usual care, but the improvement was modest and did not achieve a difference considered clinically important at the individual patient level, according to a study in the Oct. 13 issue of JAMA.

During the decade from 2004 to 2013, use of treatment remained low for individuals with opioid use disorders, according to a study in the Oct. 13 issue of JAMA.

London, UK (October 13, 2015). In March 2015 a video documentary about air pollution in China, entitled 'Under the Dome', went viral. Yet, while it is well known that the video disappeared offline following government objection, what is lesser known is that hundreds of posts on Weibo, China's equivalent to Twitter, were also censored for commenting on the film and its findings.

PHILADELPHIA - Language used in everyday social media posts may have a strong connection to an individual's health, according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. In the first study of its kind, the new results suggest that not only are many adult Facebook and Twitter users willing to share their social media data and medical data for research purposes, but that by building a language databank, it may be possible to link social media content to health outcomes.