Culture

In an advance toward a new generation of improved hip and other joint replacements, scientists are describing development of a potential implant material that flexes more like natural bone, fosters the growth of bone that keeps implants firmly in place and is less likely to fail and require repeat surgery. Their study on these so-called tantalum nanotube materials appears in ACS Applied Material & Interfaces.

President Obama's middle name, Hussein, makes Israelis – both Jewish and Arab – perceive him as less pro-Israeli, reveals a new study conducted by the University of Haifa and the University of Texas. The study has just been published in the journal Political Behavior. "Even though the Israeli public has extensive information about the American President and his positions, their opinions can still be swayed by cultural cues, such as a name that in this case is perceived as Arabic," says Dr. Israel Waismel-Manor of the University of Haifa who co-authored the study.

Vasectomy reversals should be carried out by urology specialists with access to appropriate micro-surgical training and assisted reproductive technologies and not general urology surgeons, according to research published in the October issue of BJUI.

The findings are based on a series of surveys carried out among consultant members of the British Association of Urological Surgeons (BAUS) over a ten-year period.

Patients who are regularly admitted to hospital as emergencies (known as 'frequent flyers') make up a large proportion of admissions, but focusing just on them won't solve the problem of rising admissions, say experts on bmj.com today.

According to the latest survey of UK hourly pay by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) female doctors' pay lags behind their male colleagues by 28.6%.

This "eye opener" pay gap, which trends suggest has stood at around 25% on average since 2000, remains largely inexplicable, says John Appleby, Chief Economist at the King's Fund, in an article published on bmj.com today.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A small subset of patients with open-angle glaucoma (OAG) account for a large proportion of all glaucoma-related charges in the United States, according to new data published by researchers at the University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center and Washington University, St. Louis.

These findings have importance for future evaluations of the cost-effectiveness of screening and treatment for glaucoma.

University of Iowa researchers have determined that thigh size in obese people is a reason their hip implants are more likely to fail.

In a study, the team simulated hip dislocations as they occur in humans and determined that increased thigh girth creates hip instability in morbidly obese patients (those with a body mass index (BMI) greater than 40). The researchers propose that surgeons modify surgical procedures to minimize the chance of dislocation in obese patients and consider other designs for hip replacement implants.

The United States, perceived to be a champion of economic freedom, plunged to a new low, number 18, in the latest rankings of the 2012 Economic Freedom of the World report co-authored by Florida State University economics Professor James Gwartney.

A dictionary of thousands of words chronicling the everyday lives of people in ancient Egypt — including what taxes they paid, what they expected in a marriage and how much work they had to do for the government — has been completed by scholars at the University of Chicago.

You can't change some things about people. Or can you? A new paper about group decision making says that having a seat at the table is very different than having a voice.

Political scientists at Brigham Young University and Princeton examined whether women speak less than men when a group collaborates to solve a problem. In most groups that they studied, the time that women spoke was significantly less than their proportional representation – amounting to less than 75 percent of the time that men spoke.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– The orientation of a diagram on the page of a textbook may seem inconsequential, but it can have a significant impact on a reader's ability to comprehend the information as presented, according to a team of researchers at UC Santa Barbara, Vanderbilt University, and West Carolina University. Their findings appear in a recent issue of the journal Bioscience.

EAST LANSING, Mich. — CEOs are sometimes rewarded for taking excessive risks – a practice that helped fuel the recent recession but could be altered if companies are more strategic in how they compensate their chief executives, a Michigan State University scholar argues in a new study.

Instead of issuing stock and stock options in predetermined quantities, boards of directors should vary a CEO's equity-based compensation through a plan that fosters the amount of risk-taking the firm desires, said Robert Wiseman, chairperson and professor in MSU's Department of Management.

NEW YORK – Addressing the obesity epidemic by preventing excess calorie consumption with government regulation of portion sizes is justifiable and could be an effective measure to help prevent obesity-related health problems and deaths, according to a Viewpoint in the September 19 issue of JAMA, and theme issue on obesity.

Thomas A. Farley, M.D., M.P.H., Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, presented the article at a JAMA media briefing.

Geneva, 18 September 2012 – Agreement by governments, by the end of 2012, on a set of ambitious global targets to curb the growing scourge of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), which includes cardiovascular disease (CVD; heart disease and stroke), is critical to avoiding the millions of premature deaths worldwide. This, according to a new paper published by the Global Cardiovascular Disease Taskforce a group of eminent experts who represent five leading heart-health organizations.

Contrary to previous findings, new research finds no link between chronic fatigue syndrome and the viruses XMRV (xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus) and pMLV (polytropic murine leukemia virus). A study to be published on September 18 in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, reveals that research that reported patients with chronic fatigue syndrome carried these two viruses was wrong and that there is still no evidence for an infectious cause behind chronic fatigue syndrome.