Culture

Big global questions face us, among them: How will we feed a growing global population without ruining the soil and polluting freshwater? Or meet our burgeoning energy demands while curbing the greenhouse gas emissions that fuel rising sea levels, flooding, drought, disease and wildfire? And what can we do to stem the extinction of thousands of other species that share the planet with us?

(Boston) - Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and Boston Medical Center (BMC) have found that among obese people who had lost considerable weight, those with high insulin levels--a marker of insulin resistance in the body--were the most likely to experience better blood vessel function following the weight loss. These findings appear online in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Mayo Clinic researchers have found a way to resynchronize cardiac motion following a heart attack using stem cells. Scientists implanted engineered stem cells, also known as induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, into damaged regions of mouse hearts following a heart attack. This regenerative approach successfully targeted the origin of abnormal cardiac motion, preventing heart failure. The findings appear in the September issue of the Journal of Physiology.

For many firms, losing significant revenue and profit to employee theft has been a cost of doing business.

But a new study from Washington University in St. Louis finds that information technology monitoring is strikingly effective in reducing theft and fraud, especially in the restaurant industry.

"Cleaning House: The Impact of Information Technology Monitoring on Employee Theft and Productivity," by Lamar Pierce, PhD, associate professor of strategy at Olin Business School, finds that mining sales data of employees increased restaurant revenue about 7 percent.

If you're poor and aging in America, the golden years may not be pretty, especially if you are black.

University of Central Florida assistant professor Latarsha Chisholm and colleagues conducted a study, which found that nursing homes that serve predominantly black residents tend to struggle financially and provide lower quality care than nursing homes with no black residents. Results were recently published in the Health Services Research journal.

CORVALLIS, Ore. -- Women are two to eight times more likely than men to suffer a debilitating tear of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in the knee and a new study suggests that a combination of body type and landing techniques may be to blame.

In two new studies published online this week in the Journal of Athletic Training, lead author Marc Norcross of Oregon State University documents how women who were asked to undergo a series of jumping exercises landed more often than men in a way associated with elevated risk of ACL injuries.

Research has shown that giving obese rodents a recently identified circulating protein called fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21) helps improve their metabolism. Now investigators reporting in the Cell Press journal Cell Metabolism reveal that a variant of FGF21 has similar effects in obese people with type 2 diabetes.

Scientists from the Institute of Health Economics and Health Care Management (IGM) and from the Institute of Epidemiology II (EPI II) discovered that weight gain leads to deterioration in physical health. Female study participants, however, experienced improved mental quality of life as their weight increased, a result that was observed even in women who were already overweight when the study began.

The EU e-infrastructure coordination pro-iBiosphere project is preparing the ground for the pursuit of biological research in the digital age.

Stroke is the second cause of death worldwide. Atrial fibrillation is the most common clinically relevant cardiac arrhythmia in Europe, affecting approximately 1.5-2% of the general population.1 Prevalence is estimated to double in the next 50 years as the population ages.

The findings were presented at the ESC Congress today by Ms Stina Jakobsson from Sweden. They reveal that reperfusion therapy and secondary prevention drugs produced the decline and brought stroke risk after AMI closer to that of non-diabetics.

With a growing incidence of cardiovascular disease in Asia, lifestyle modification such as weight loss and routine exercise plays an important role in early primary cardiovascular disease prevention. While it is widely known that patients with cardiovascular conditions will benefit from participating in a structured cardiac rehabilitation programme, particularly in a convenient and affordable community-based setting, there is no published data that showed the effectiveness of such a programme in the Asian population to date.

Recent research, by Dr Selvaraj Velayutham published in a forthcoming issue of The Economic and Labour Relations Review, published by SAGE, details the exploitation of Indian immigrant workers in Australia on 457 visas.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands – Tuesday 3 September 2013: Low BMI is a risk factor for CVD in hypertensive patients with diabetes, according to research presented at the ESC Congress today by Dr Takanori Nagahiro from Japan. The findings provide evidence for an obesity paradox in hypertensive patients with glucose intolerance.

AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands – An emergency department strategy that uses two biomarkers to triage patients with suspected acute coronary syndrome (ACS) can increase the rate of early, safe hospital discharge, according to results of the Biomarkers in Cardiology 8 (BIC-8) trial.