Culture

A computer model of the heart wall predicted risk of irregular heart rhythms and sudden cardiac death in patients, paving the way for the use of more complex cardiac models to calculate the consequences of genetic, lifestyle and other changes to the heart.

Authors of the new study, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, say this is the first report of cardiac modeling being used as an arrhythmic risk predictor for patients.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Low-wage workers, who make up a large and growing share of the U.S. workforce, are especially vulnerable to financial hits that can result from on-the-job injuries and illnesses, according to a policy brief released today by researchers at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services (SPHHS).

Efforts to reduce underage exposure to alcohol advertising by implementing time restrictions have not worked, according to new research from the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Dutch Institute for Alcohol Policy. The report, published in the Journal of Public Affairs, confirms what Dutch researchers had already learned in that country: time restrictions on alcohol advertising actually increase teen exposure, because companies move the advertising to late night.

INDIANAPOLIS -- Despite U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations requiring generic medications to carry identical warnings to those on corresponding brand-name products, a study by Regenstrief Institute researchers has found that more than two-thirds of generic drugs have safety-warning labels that differ from the equivalent brand-name drug.

Over 9 million people died as a consequence of high blood pressure in 2010, making it the health risk factor with the greatest toll worldwide, say experts.

Smoking and alcohol use have also overtaken child hunger in the last two decades to become the second and third leading risks globally, according to a study estimating the disease burden attributable to 43 risk factors in 1990 and 2010.

The analysis was undertaken by an international consortium of scientists as part of the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010, which is published in The Lancet today.

Primary sources publisher, Adam Matthew, has announced the release of the fourth section of its highly renowned Victorian Popular Culture Portal. "Moving Pictures, Optical Entertainments and the Advent of Cinema" explores the cultural history of optical entertainments from the late 18th century to the early 20th century, bringing to life the rich cultural and scientific history from which cinema was born.

Almost one in three pedestrians is distracted by mobile devices while crossing busy road junctions, finds an observational study published online in Injury Prevention.

Texting while crossing the road is the most distracting, and potentially most dangerous, activity, prompting the authors to suggest that a low tolerance approach similar to that taken towards drink-driving might be needed.

HOUSTON - Donated umbilical cord blood establishes a new blood supply in patients more quickly after transplantation when it is first expanded in the lab on a bed of cells that mimics conditions in the bone marrow, researchers report in the Dec. 13 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Poor eating and exercise habits could be the game-changer in the fight against heart disease and stroke deaths, according to the American Heart Association's "Heart Disease and Stroke Statistical Update 2013," published in the American Heart Association journal, Circulation.

Some people like to have a few close friends, while others prefer a wider social circle that is perhaps less deep. These preferences reflect people's personalities and individual circumstances — but is one approach to social networks "better" than the other? New research suggests that the optimal social networking strategy depends on socioeconomic conditions.

• People who develop chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) are typically age 65 and older, but participants in CLL clinical trials are usually several years younger;
• The age of CLL patients is not usually considered when determining treatment;
• This study suggests that older and younger CLL patients require different therapy.

A new listening device, developed by scientists from the University of Southampton, is being used to monitor the effectiveness of the treatment of kidney stones - saving patients unnecessary repeat therapy and x-ray monitoring.

If kidney stones cannot be dissolved by drugs, the favoured procedure is lithotripsy. Lithotripsy works by focusing thousands of shock waves onto the kidney stones in an effort to break them into pieces small enough to urinate out of the body or be dissolved by drugs.

Economists at the University of Warwick have calculated the true value of US political lobbyists, proving the old adage 'it is not what you know, but who you know'.

In a paper published this month in the American Economic Review Mirko Draca, from the University of Warwick's Department of Economics, looked at the role of lobbyists in the US. He found their revenue falls by 24% when their former employer leaves government office.

New York, NY, December 12th, 2012—Average premiums for employer-sponsored family health insurance plans rose 62 percent between 2003 and 2011, from $9,249 to $15,022 per year, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report. The report, which tracks state trends in employer health insurance coverage, finds that health insurance costs rose far faster than incomes in all states. Workers are also paying more out-of-pocket as employee payments for their share of health insurance premiums rose by 74 percent on average and deductibles more than doubled, up 117 percent between 2003 and 2011.

Measures of uncertainty should be taken into account when estimating progress towards Millennium Development Goal 4 (to reduce the mortality rate of children under 5 years by two thirds from the 1990 level by 2015) in order to give more accurate assessments of countries' progress, according to a study published in this week's PLOS Medicine.