Culture

On the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a three-part Series published in The Lancet looks at the enduring radiological and psychological impact of nuclear disasters, including the most recent accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan in 2011. The Series provides vital information for the public health planning of future disasters to protect the millions of people who live in areas surrounding the 437 nuclear power plants that are in operation worldwide.

Following the BMA's call for a 20% sugar tax to subsidise the cost of fruit and vegetables, experts in The BMJ this week debate whether a sugar tax could help combat obesity.

Sirpa Sarlio-Lähteenkorva, adviser at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health in Finland, says that a specific tax on sugar would reduce consumption. "Increasing evidence suggests that taxes on soft drinks, sugar, and snacks can change diets and improve health, especially in lower socioeconomic groups," she writes.

Recent research has shown that racial segregation in the U.S. is declining between neighborhoods, and sociologists have been scrambling to find new ways to see discrimination. They believe that have found it, in micro-segregation, like when gay people complain that straight people move into their neighborhoods, or when suburban communities are separate from other communities and think they are better because of things like schools.

This week’s New York Magazine surely has its most poignant cover ever, in a piece of remarkable journalism. With the caption: “the unwelcome sisterhood”, the cover shows black and white photographs of 35 of the 46 women whose sexual assault allegations against Bill Cosby span five decades.

There’s been a lot of talk about killing feral cats, with the government’s recently announced war on cats setting the goal of killing two million by 2020.

On The Conversation last week, Katherine Moseby and John Read explained several different ways to control feral cats, including baiting.

But we would like to offer a different idea: let’s embrace cats as part of Australia’s environment. We could even rename them “Australian wildcats”. Let us explain.

Babies born very premature or severely underweight are at heightened risk of becoming introverted, neurotic, and risk averse as adults, indicates research published online in the Archives of Disease in Childhood (Fetal & Neonatal Edition).

This personality profile may help to explain the higher rates of career and relationship difficulties experienced by this group as adults, suggest the researchers.

Depression and personality disorders are the most common diagnoses among Belgian psychiatric patients requesting help to die, on the grounds of unbearable suffering, finds research published in the online journal BMJ Open.

Drugs, given either by mouth or administered intravenously, are used to perform euthanasia in Belgium, where the practice has been legal since 2002.

The researchers wanted to find out if there were any discernible patterns in requests for euthanasia among mentally ill patients in Belgium in a bid to inform recommendations for future research.

Antonio Aledo, Professor of Sociology at the University of Alicante, warns that "because of real estate speculation and the management of public budgets based on income from the real estate business, seismic risk has been forgotten." Taking as reference the town of Torrevieja, where one of the biggest earthquakes in the province of Alicante took place in 1829 with more than 389 dead and 209 wounded, the professor has published an article on seismic risk in tourist destinations since "the technological solutions proposed in its Local Action Plan against earthquakes does not seem enough," he

The movies of Alfred Hitchcock have made palms sweat and pulses race for more than 65 years. Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have now learned how the Master of Suspense affects audiences' brains. Their study measured brain activity while people watched clips from Hitchcock and other suspenseful films. During high suspense moments, the brain narrows what people see and focuses their attention on the story. During less suspenseful moments of the film clips, viewers devote more attention to their surroundings.

The over 50s who are 'successful agers'--healthy, active, sociable, and well off--are more at risk of harmful drinking than their less successful peers, concludes research published in the online journal BMJ Open.

Harmful drinking is a "middle class phenomenon" which may be a hidden health and social problem in otherwise successful older people, warn the researchers, who call for explicit guidelines on alcohol consumption for this group.

From "free range" and "grass fed" to "all natural" and "pasture raised", if there is a label that can appeal to consumers, someone will print a label.

And it works. Profit margins are good in the organic/pick-a-process market, and meat is a large chunk of their $100 billion business. It's among the fastest growing components of the overall organic food market over the last decade, according to market research publisher Packaged Facts in the report Branded Refrigerated Meats and Meals: U.S. Market Trends.

You don't think you're hungry, then a friend mentions how hungry he is or you smell some freshly baked pizza and whoaaa, you suddenly feel really hungry. Or, you've had surgery and need a bit of morphine for pain. As soon as you hit that button you feel relief even though the medicine hasn't even hit your bloodstream.

These are two examples of the oft-studied placebo effect that demonstrate the amazing and still somewhat confounding powers of the human brain.

Do you procrastinate about taking care of financial matters in your life?Recently a fascinating article about financial procrastination appeared online.

The author publicly admitted that “after years of procrastinating,” he finally logged on to his retirement account. It took him years to get around to dealing with it because the entire task made him anxious.

A new paper links adults born very premature with being socially withdrawn and displaying signs of autism. The work was led by Professor Dieter Wolke at the department of psychology and Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick. He and coauthors correlate adults born very preterm scored highly for displaying a socially withdrawn personality, indicated by autistic features, neuroticism, introversion and decreased risk taking.

Next time you are in your local grocery store, step in to look a little more closely at the beer cooler. Amid the brightly colored, creative packaging lies the final battle for the ultimate goal – your purchases.

But, what battles were fought to get the beer to that particular cooler? More importantly, what might those battles say about larger trends in business today?