Culture

URBANA – When low-income families devote three to four extra minutes to regular family mealtimes, their children's ability to achieve and maintain a normal weight improves measurably, according to a new University of Illinois study.

"Children whose families engaged with each other over a 20-minute meal four times a week weighed significantly less than kids who left the table after 15 to 17 minutes. Over time, those extra minutes per meal add up and become really powerful," said Barbara H. Fiese, director of the U of I's Family Resiliency Program.

Los Angeles, CA (January 17, 2013) - Plantar fasciitis is the most frequent cause of chronic heel pain, leaving many sufferers unable to put their best foot forward for months at a time. Now a Mexican study suggests that physicians should turn to Botox rather than steroids to offer patients the fastest road to recovery. The research appears in the journal Foot & Ankle International, published by SAGE.

Many people who suffer from chronic kidney disease progressively lose their kidney function over time and eventually develop a condition called end-stage renal disease – the complete failure of the kidneys – placing them in need of lifelong dialysis or a kidney transplant.

Patients who received Guided Care, a comprehensive form of primary care for older adults with chronic health problems, rated the quality of their care much higher than patients in regular primary care, and used less home care, according to a study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A new way to test anti-hearing-loss drugs in people could help land those medicines on pharmacy shelves sooner. University of Florida researchers have figured out the longstanding problem of how to safely create temporary, reversible hearing loss in order to see how well the drugs work. The findings are described in the November/December 2012 issue of the journal Ear & Hearing.

Caesarean section increases the risk of persistent pelvic girdle pain after delivery compared with vaginal delivery, according to a new study from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

Caesarean section rates are increasing worldwide, and this trend has partly been explained by women's requests for planned caesarean section without a medical reason. Pregnancy-related pelvic girdle pain has been associated with increased preference for caesarean section and with increased planned caesarean section rates.

Record warm temperatures in 2010 and 2012 resulted in the earliest spring flowering in the eastern United States in more than 150 years, researchers at Harvard University, Boston University and the University of Wisconsin have found.

Finding Mr. or Ms. Right is a complicated process, and choosing a mate may involve compromising - well, maybe on trivial things, like whether or not having kids is important or on being different religions or races. Height preference seems to be a hard stop for many, according to a paper published January 16th in PLOS ONE by Gert Stulp and other psychologists from the University of Groningen, Netherlands who suggest that despite the many other factors involved, people's preferences for a partner's height are accurately reflected in real couples in the UK.

Boston – In an airplane crisis—an engine failure, a fire—pilots pull out a checklist to help with their decision-making. But in an operating room crisis—massive bleeding, a patient's heart stops—surgical teams don't. Given the complexity of judgment and circumstances, standard practice is for teams to use memory alone.

PITTSBURGH, Jan. 16, 2013 – Smartphone applications that claim to evaluate a user's photographs of skin lesions for the likelihood of cancer instead returned highly variable and often inaccurate feedback, according to a study led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. The findings, published in JAMA Dermatology and available online today, suggest that relying on these "apps" instead of consulting with a physician may delay the diagnosis of melanoma and timely, life-saving treatment.

Researchers have found clear, identifiable factors that signal whether an athlete will experience concussive symptoms beyond one week. The researchers sought to identify risk factors for prolonged concussion symptoms by examining a large national database of high school athletes' injuries. Previous concussion studies were limited in scope, focusing only on male football players. The information from this study applies to male and female athletes from a number of different sports.

Eliminating or curtailing the mortgage interest deduction (MID) would initially result in declines in housing prices and investment but would have only modest aggregate macroeconomic effects in the long run, according to a new paper from Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Efforts to frame beliefs about health care reform may backfire, depending on individuals' political views and level of knowledge, suggests a study in the February issue of Medical Care.

Many mothers of newborns in neonatal intensive care units have difficulty finding private, quiet places in the hospital to express milk, according to a new study from the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University.

The lack of privacy—if it causes mothers to miss feedings or makes them too timid to express milk—is an even greater health risk for low-weight premature newborns, because milk enriched with the mother's antibodies helps ward off infection and gastrointestinal problems.

Public relations professionals who have provided ethics counsel to senior management are at least as fervent about serving the public interest — sometimes even more so — as they are about their duty to their organizations, according to a Baylor University researcher.