Culture

Patients suffering from so-called immune-mediated neuropathies frequently have a long medical record. As there are no diagnostic tests available to reliably diagnose the disease, the diagnosis is frequently made belatedly and patients can be misdiagnosed. Accordingly, many years often pass before an effective therapy is started. However, not all patients respond to first-choice drugs even when treated immediately.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- A new study of the interplay between function, form and ergonomics reveals an important strategic design trade-off for automotive manufacturers: Investments in both function and ergonomics result in higher market share, whereas investments in both function and form impose a share penalty.

Car companies can either "design for satisfaction" by investing in function and ergonomics or "design for delight" by investing in form, said Raj Echambadi, a professor of business administration at Illinois and co-author of the new research.

Typically, trash films are low budget films, which do not correspond to the mainstream standards and taste. However, with three sequels and a big fan community, a film like "Sharknado" is a perfect example for the success of trash films. "Apart from flying sharks, blood and guts are the main ingredients of this surprise trash hit", says Keyvan Sarkhosh, postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics.

A study published today in the scientific journal Addiction finds that exposure to several different types of alcohol marketing is positively associated with the amount and frequency of drinking among adolescents across Europe.

It's assumed that family and friends will help out in the event of a medical crisis, but that's not always feasible. And when stroke survivors need more than 20 hours of care per week, as a study in the August edition of Stroke shows, it's a large burden for their loved ones.

More than half of elderly stroke survivors receive help from a caregiver, requiring 22.3 hours of assistance per week on average. That's nearly double what elderly patients who have not had a stroke require, at an average of 11.8 hours of help.

Would you want to alter your future children’s genes to make them smarter, stronger or better-looking? As the state of the science brings prospects like these closer to reality, an international debate has been raging over the ethics of enhancing human capacities with biotechnologies such as so-called smart pills, brain implants and gene editing.

For viewers it seems to be very difficult to tell the difference between real and artificially rendered 3-D films. Psychologists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have studied the effects of various technologies and found that it plays virtually no role in the viewer's experience whether a 3-D film was originally produced as such or whether it was later converted from 2-D to 3-D using algorithms as, for example, is the case with new 3-D televisions.

August 1, 2016 - Do you have dry eyes or other symptoms related to wearing contact lenses? If so you're not alone--up to 50 percent of contact lens wearers experience dryness or discomfort at least occasionally.

Investigators from Brigham and Women's Hospital have found that "non-functional" adrenal tumors can increase a person's risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Benign adrenal tumors that don't appear to secrete hormones are labeled as "non-functional" and are currently considered by physicians to pose no health risks, but these new results challenge that assumption.

Among non-critically ill patients, use of standardized cardiac telemetry with an off-site central monitoring unit was associated with detection and notification of cardiac rhythm and rate changes within 1 hour prior to the majority of emergency response team activations, and also with a reduction in the number of monitored patients, without an increase in cardiopulmonary arrest events, according to a study appearing in the August 2 issue of JAMA.

Among patients recently hospitalized with heart failure and reduced left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF; a measure of heart function), the use of the drug liraglutide did not lead to greater post-hospitalization clinical stability, according to a study appearing in the August 2 issue of JAMA.

Early use of vasopressin to treat septic shock did not improve the number of kidney failure-free days compared with norepinephrine, according to a study appearing in the August 2 issue of JAMA.

In 2015, it was estimated that there were more than 230,000 cases of septic shock, with more than 40,000 deaths in the United States each year. Norepinephrine is currently recommended as the first-line vasopressor (an agent that produces vasoconstriction and a rise in blood pressure) in septic shock; however, early vasopressin use has been proposed as an alternative.

PHILADELPHIA -In an attempt to correct defects in the energy generation that contribute to poor pump function among heart failure patients, researchers examined whether the diabetes drug liraglutide, could improve the condition of patients with advanced heart failure. Despite improvements in blood sugar control, the therapy did not improve the clinical stability or pumping action of the heart in patients with advanced heart failure. A team of researchers led by Kenneth B.

• Report suggests mobile scanning technologies generate significantly high rates of loss
• Technology promotes ease of effort for theft by removing human contact in shopping process
• Retailers could find themselves accused of making theft easy for people who otherwise would not be tempted to commit crime

The report is available on request by emailing ap507@le.ac.uk

EAST LANSING, Mich. - New research at Michigan State University and published in the current issue of Nature Communications shows how Geobacter bacteria grow as films on electrodes and generate electricity - a process that's ready to be scaled up to industrial levels.

The thick biofilm, a gelatin microbial dynamo of sorts, is a combination of cells loaded with cytochromes, metal-based proteins, and pili, hairlike protein filaments discovered and patented by MSU's Gemma Reguera, associate professor of microbiology.