Culture

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Support for gay marriage is growing in Michigan, mirroring changing attitudes in many parts of the United States, according to Michigan State University's State of the State Survey.

A recent survey found that 56 percent of the state's residents support gay marriage while 39 percent oppose it. Two years ago, 48 percent supported gay marriage and 51 percent were opposed.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Three organizations representing America's research universities today launched a website that aims to inform policymakers and the public of the impact that the upcoming budget sequester would have on federal funding for university research.

Injured patients were less likely to die in the hospital if they had alcohol in their blood, according to a study from the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health -- and the more alcohol, the more likely they were to survive.

"This study is not encouraging people to drink," cautions UIC injury epidemiologist Lee Friedman, author of the study, which will be published in the December issue of the journal Alcohol and is now online.

A new study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden shows, that a technique for measuring bone density called digital X-ray radiogrammetry (or DXR) used on standard hand radiographs can help to identify patients with a higher risk of hip fracture. The researchers believe that DXR, which is fully comparable with other, more costly methods, can be used preventively to identify people in the risk zone for osteoporosis – a disease estimated to effect some 200 million women worldwide.

These are some of the results of a report for the World Bank, conducted by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and Climate Analytics in Berlin. The poorest in the world are those that will be hit hardest, making development without climate policy almost impossible, the researchers conclude.

A drug commonly prescribed to help patients sleep in hospitals has been associated with an increased risk of falls, according to a study published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine.

U.S. sleep specialists from the Mayo Clinic found that the fall rate among the 4,962 patients who took zolpidem during their hospital stay was more than four times as high as the 11,358 who did not take the drug.

Athens, Ga. – Psychological factors can have as much—or more—impact on pediatric chest pain as physical ones, a University of Georgia study found recently. UGA psychologists discovered pediatric patients diagnosed with noncardiac chest pain have higher levels of anxiety and depression than patients diagnosed with innocent heart murmurs–the noise of normal turbulent blood flow in a structurally normal heart.

The UGA research was done in collaboration with Children's Healthcare of Atlanta and Emory University.

Small floating objects change the dynamics of the surface they are on. This is an effect every serious student of breakfast has seen as rafts of floating cereal o's arrange and rearrange themselves into patterns on the milk. Now scientists have suggested that this process may offer insight into nanoscale engineering processes.

For the first time, Bochum clinicians have been able to show on the basis of a large sample, that it is possible to examine children's heads in the MRI scanner without general anaesthesia or other medical sedation. In many cases it was sufficient to prepare the young patients for the examination in an age-appropriate manner in order to take away their fear of the tube. And the results speak for themselves: of the 2461 image sequences recorded with 326 patients, the participating radiologists classified 97 percent as "diagnostically relevant".

The skin is the most versatile of our organs: It protects the body from environmental effects, contributes to the body's immune system and supports metabolic functions such as breathing. The skin is always in action. Lack of movement is anathema to it. If a patient does not move, the ever higher moisture levels, pressure and effects of gravity lead to circulatory disorders. This increases the amount of toxic tissue, resulting in ulcers which can lead to life-threatening complications.

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y., NOV. 16, 2012 – Lowering pre-term birth rates by an average of 5 percent across 39 high-resource countries, including the United States, by 2015 would prevent prematurity for 58,000 babies a year, a group of international experts wrote today in The Lancet, to coincide with the second annual World Prematurity Day, the expert group say prevention of pre-term birth also could save billions in economic costs.

Chicago --- In a new study, Northwestern Medicine researchers found that patients at high risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) are more likely to receive a prescription for cholesterol-lowering medication, and to achieve lower long-term cholesterol levels, when doctors use electronic health records (EHRs) to deliver personalized risk assessments via mail.

TORONTO, ON – A University of Toronto-led team of anthropologists has found evidence that human ancestors used stone-tipped weapons for hunting 500,000 years ago – 200,000 years earlier than previously thought.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Cellphones and driving go together like knives and juggling. But when cellphone use is banned, are drivers any safer?

It depends on where you're driving, a study by University of Illinois researchers says.

The study found that, long-term, enacting a cellphone ban was associated with a relative decrease in the accident rate in urban areas. However, in very rural areas, cellphone bans were associated with higher accident rates than would otherwise be expected.

Although some scholars have suggested that the income gap between men and women is due to women's reluctance to negotiate salaries, a new study at the University of Chicago shows that given an invitation, women are just as willing as men to negotiate for more pay.

Men, however, are more likely than women to ask for more money when there is no explicit statement in a job description that wages are negotiable, the study showed.