Culture

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Researchers at Mayo Clinic Cancer Center have developed new guidelines to treat recently diagnosed multiple myeloma patients who are not participating in clinical trials. The guidelines give physicians practical, easy to follow recommendations for providing initial therapy, stem cell transplant and maintenance therapy. The guidelines are published in the current issue of the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings and represent a consensus opinion of hematologists at Mayo Clinic Cancer Center sites in Minnesota, Florida and Arizona.

The word "organic" can mean many things to consumers. Even so, the power of an organic label can be very strong: studies have shown that this simple label can lead us to think that a food is healthier, through what is known as the 'health halo effect'. But can this bias go further? A study by Cornell University's Food and Brand Lab researchers Lee, Shimizu, Kniffin and Wansink set out to answer this question.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Imagine if you could drink a glass of water just by inserting a solid wire into it and sucking on it as though it were a soda straw. It turns out that if you were tiny enough, that method would work just fine — and wouldn't even require the suction to start.

For-profit hospitals are out-performing other hospitals when treating stroke, heart attack and pneumonia patients in emergency departments and, thus, will be more likely to receive bonuses under Medicare's new payment rules, according to a new Northwestern Medicine study.

Though nonprofit and public hospitals are lagging behind in performance, they are trying to make improvements and will be eligible for bonuses also.

Scientists have mostly focused on the benefits of meditation for the brain and the body, but a recent study by Northeastern University's David DeSteno, published in Psychological Science, takes a look at what impacts meditation has on interpersonal harmony and compassion.

Several religious traditions have suggested that mediation does just that, but there has been no scientific proof—until now.

It's 3 a.m., and students from two Oregon community colleges are rocking back and forth through roiling seas. Their objective is to recover an ocean-bottom seismometer that has been lying 160 meters underwater off the west coast of Vancouver Island, where it has been steadily recording seismic signals and long-period pressure trends for the past year. These students are experiencing what earth scientists do for a living, as a part of the Cascadia Initiative's CC@Sea program.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - Men who have dependent children and whose spouses or partners died from cancer are an overlooked population. These fathers face unique challenges not addressed by traditional grief support groups that often attract an older, female population.

Faculty in the UNC Department of Psychiatry report on a successful pilot peer support program called "Single Fathers Due to Cancer" they created to help these men. The program is the first of its kind in the United States.

Singapore, 31 March 2013 – An international research team has identified a new type of deadly intestinal lymphoma that is particularly common in Asia. The team, led by clinician-scientists from the SingHealth Academic Healthcare Cluster, also developed a new diagnostic test to accurately identify these patients.

Even if you didn't eat your veggies or drink your milk as a child, your height is still in your hands, reveal new findings by economists from the University of Southern California, Harvard University and Peking University.

Using unique data from a new massive longitudinal survey of 17,708 adults beginning at age 45, the researchers show for the first time that lifestyle choices we make in adulthood — and not just the hand we're dealt as children — influence how tall we stand as we age.

Millbrook, NY – Pharmaceuticals commonly found in the environment are disrupting streams, with unknown impacts on aquatic life and water quality. So reports a new Ecological Applications paper, which highlights the ecological cost of pharmaceutical waste and the need for more research into environmental impacts.

Philadelphia, Pa. (April 1, 2013) - By middle age, most people have age-related declines in near vision (presbyopia) requiring bifocals or reading glasses.

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Researchers propose streamlining the review process for rejected manuscripts by including the initial reviews when submitting the revised manuscript to another journal, reasoning this would expedite the decision process and decrease the burden on peer reviewers.

Highlights

A UCLA study shows that heart failure medications recommended by national guidelines are highly cost effective in saving lives and may also provide savings to the health care system.

Heart failure, a chronic, progressive disease, affects millions of individuals and results in considerable morbidity, the use of extensive health care resources, and substantial costs.

NEW YORK (March 28, 2013) — A new study led by WCS-India scientist Vidya Athreaya finds that certain landscapes of western India completely devoid of wilderness and with high human populations are crawling with a different kind of backyard wildlife: leopards.

The study found as many as five adult large carnivores, including leopards and striped hyenas, per 100 square kilometers (38 square miles), a density never before reported in a human-dominated landscape.