Seeking ways to change cancer patients' perceptions and negative attitudes towards clinical trials participation, researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center conducted a study offering two different kinds of intervention to two groups of adults with cancer who had not previously been asked to participate in clinical trials. They found a multimedia psychoeducational intervention to be more effective in changing patients' perceptions and negative attitudes toward clinical trials than standard educational literature. The study was published in a recent issue of the Journal of Clinical ...

BOSTON (June 13, 2012)—We've all seen them in the waiting room of the doctor's office—pens, notepads, magnets, and clipboards adorned with the logos of brand-name drugs. These freebies may seem inconsequential, but a large and compelling body of evidence shows that even these small gifts may influence which drug a doctor prescribes. "What most people haven't seen is many of the other giveaways that pharmaceutical and medical-device companies routinely provide to doctors, ranging from elaborate meals in local restaurants to expensive resort travel in the form of continuing ...

President Obama's health care law has consistently been attacked by GOP officials throughout recent years, but now, Democrats and Republicans may be acting against it together. According to an article in The Washington Times a law could be passed in January that calls for a 2.3 percent tax increase "on the sales of manufacturers that produce x-rays machines, medical monitors, life-support equipment and other devices." If the repeal goes forward it will mark the 30th GOP attempt to "poke holes" in Obama's health care initiatives. Many experts believe, ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- No matter how much time you've spent training your brain to multitask by playing "Call of Duty," you're probably no better at talking on the phone while driving than anybody else. A study by the Visual Cognition Laboratory at Duke University wanted to see whether gamers who have spent hours in front of a screen simultaneously watching the map, scanning doorways for bad guys and listening to the chatter of their fellow gamers could answer questions and drive at the same time. The finding: not so much. "It doesn't matter how much you've trained your ...

'Modern' fathers have been around for far longer than we think, but they have only recently started to change nappies according to research from the University of Warwick. In a new paper published on the History & Policy website today, Dr Laura King from the University of Warwick's Centre for the History of Medicine said the assumption that fathers have only become more involved in looking after their children over the past 20 years is not true. However, statistics show it has taken longer for dads to get to grips with dirty nappies. Figures from a 1982 study showed ...

Throughout the United States, there are 79 people serving sentences of life without parole for crimes they committed when they were 14 years old or younger. Many have decried this practice, arguing that it is unjust to impose such harsh punishments on the acts of children, many of whose brains were not fully developed enough to appreciate the consequences of their actions. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down laws allowing the death penalty as punishment for juvenile crimes and abolished life without parole for non-homicide juvenile offenses. However, in many ...

Wolozin's group also pursued the observation that some of the RNA binding proteins bind to tau protein, and tested whether one of these proteins, TIA-1, might contribute to the disease process. Previously, scientists have demonstrated that TIA-1 spontaneously aggregates in response to stress as a normal part of the stress response. Wolozin and his colleagues hypothesize that since TIA-1 binds tau, it might stimulate tau aggregation during the stress response. They introduced TIA-1 into neurons with tau protein, and subjected the neurons to stress. Consistent with their ...

Each year in the United States about $135 billion is spent in training employees — but those billions do not always improve the workplace because the skills often do not transfer to the actual job. "Learning is a way of life in organizations," says Eduardo Salas, a psychological scientist from the University of Central Florida. "Everyone gets training. But what matters? What works? What influences learning and skill acquisition?" In a new report published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, Salas and ...

Although mammograms are often a life-saving tool for women, according to a study published the Annals of Internal Medicine, the frequency that women undergo these tests should be customized to each patient -- based on the woman's age, breast density and her family's history of breast cancer. Although the American Cancer Society suggests that women begin receiving annual mammograms at age 40, and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Forces advises women to be screened every other year from age 50 to 74, John Schousboe of Park Nicollet Health Services in Minneapolis and his ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- MIT engineers have developed a fuel cell that runs on the same sugar that powers human cells: glucose. This glucose fuel cell could be used to drive highly efficient brain implants of the future, which could help paralyzed patients move their arms and legs again. The fuel cell, described in the June 12 edition of the journal PLoS ONE, strips electrons from glucose molecules to create a small electric current. The researchers, led by Rahul Sarpeshkar, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, fabricated the fuel cell ...

(Boston) - Researchers from Boston University Schools of Medicine and Public Health (BUSM, BUSPH), along with the VA Boston Healthcare System and Harvard Medical School, have found inpatient medical procedures increased more among non-elderly, lower- and medium- income populations, Hispanics and whites, after health care reform went into effect in Massachusetts. The findings, which currently appear in Medical Care, suggest improved access to outpatient care for vulnerable subpopulations since health care reform took effect. The 2006 Massachusetts health reform implementation ...

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, or CPSC, reports that it received fewer reports of injuries from companies in 2011. It is unclear if this is due to an actual drop in injuries or because more companies are failing to report injuries involving their products. CBS News reports that 10 companies were fined more than $4 million in 2011, up substantially from the previous year's two companies. Companies tend to be less than enthusiastic when voluntarily reporting injuries, but the reports are required by law. Some companies may claim they did not report certain ...

AURORA, Colo. (June 13, 2012) – Estrogen-deficient, postmenopausal women who have had their uterus removed appear to have stiffer arteries compared to similar women who have not had a hysterectomy, according to new research from the University of Colorado School of Medicine. The finding may help explain the greater risk of cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in women, reported in previous research. "The message here is that having a hysterectomy may lead to large artery stiffening, which can lead to the development of cardiovascular disease," said Kerrie ...

North-East Passage soon free from ice again? Winter measurements show thin sea ice in the Laptev Sea, pointing to early and large-scale summer melt The North-East Passage, the sea route along the North coast of Russia, is expected to be free of ice early again this summer. The forecast was made by sea ice physicists of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association based on a series of measurement flights over the Laptev Sea, a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. Amongst experts the shelf sea is known as an "ice factory" of Arctic ...

In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court held that people harmed by generic prescription drugs cannot sue generic manufacturers under the claim of inadequate warning labels. In PLIVA, Inc. v. Mensing, the High Court dismissed the legal claims of two women who suffered physical injury because of the inadequate warning labels on their generic medication. While the Court ruled in 2009 that injured plaintiffs could bring state law claims against pharmaceutical companies for poor labeling on name-brand drugs, the PLIVA ruling bars similar suits against manufacturers of the generic ...

A significant number of teenagers are sending and receiving sexually explicit cell phone photos, often with little, if any, awareness of the possible psychological, interpersonal, and sometimes legal consequences of doing so. Even many of those who believe there could be serious legal consequences are undeterred and still choose to engage in 'sexting'. These findings by Donald Strassberg, from the University of Utah (US), and colleagues are published online in Springer's journal Archives of Sexual Behavior. New communication technologies play an increasingly important ...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—June 13, 2012—Scientists at the Gladstone Institutes today are announcing their role in an unprecedented collaboration organized by the National Institutes of Health, which used groundbreaking methods to vastly improve our understanding of bacteria that reside in and on the human body. In a series of coordinated scientific reports, some 200 members of the Human Microbiome Project (HMP) Consortium from nearly 80 research institutions used advanced DNA-sequencing techniques to identify the thousands of microorganisms that live on humans. Researchers believe ...

Children are not just miniature versions of adults. Their rapidly-developing bodies have different physiological sensitivities, and pediatric medical care should reflect this. However, for years, the same CT scans, fluoroscopy procedures and other X-ray imaging techniques have been used on both adults and children. Now, concerned about cancer diagnosis and other potential ill-effects of kids' exposure to radiation, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is calling for X-ray imaging devices that take into account the unique health care needs of children. Cancer-Causing ...

A new study eases concerns that irrigating crops with water released from sewage treatment plants — an increasingly common practice in arid areas of the world — fosters emergence of the antibiotic-resistant bacteria that cause thousands of serious infections each year. The research appears in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology. Eddie Cytryn and colleagues explain that a large fraction of antibiotics given to people or animals pass out of the body unchanged in the urine and are transferred via sewage systems to wastewater treatment facilities. These facilities ...

A long-used anti-cancer drug could be a starting point to develop new treatments for the incurable nerve disease known as Lou Gehrig's disease or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), scientists are reporting. Their research showing how the drug prevents clumping of an enzyme linked to ALS appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Lucia Banci, Ivano Bertini and colleagues explain that ALS causes a progressive loss of muscle control as the nerves that control body movements wither and die. Patients become weak and have difficulty swallowing and breathing, ...

A phenomenon first observed by an ancient Greek philosopher 2,300 years ago has become the basis for a new device designed to harvest the enormous amounts of energy wasted as heat each year to produce electricity. The first-of-its-kind "pyroelectric nanogenerator" is the topic of a report in ACS' journal Nano Letters. Zhong Lin Wang and colleagues at Georgia Tech explain that more than 50 percent of the energy generated in the U.S. each year goes to waste, much of it as heat released to the environment by everything from computers to cars to long-distance electric transmission ...

In the aftermath of a workplace injury, slicing through the red tape of the New York workers' compensation process is something you may be ill-equipped for. You just want to get better, and need the money you're entitled to in order to see you through your time of need. Now, a new set of medical testing regulations could further complicate your pursuit of workers' comp benefits. Regulations Require Workers to Go to In Network Testing Facilities Workers' compensation provides payments for wage replacement and medical expenses during the time an employee is incapacitated ...

WOODS HOLE, MASS. – The landmark publication this week of a "map" of the bacterial make-up of healthy humans has deep roots in an unexpected place: the ocean. Microbial communities that live on and in the human body, known collectively as the microbiome, are thought to have a critical role in human health and disease. Five years ago, the National Institutes of Health launched the ambitious Human Microbiome Project (HMP) to define the boundaries of bacterial variation found in 242 healthy human beings. "In order to understand what sick is, it's helpful to define the ...

The National Academy on an Aging Society has released its Public Policy & Aging Report (PPAR) that finds as many as one in 10 people age 60 and over has suffered some form of elder abuse. The National Academy is the policy institute of The Gerontological Society of America. Elder abuse covers a broad range of mistreatment, from physical abuse in a nursing home, to other forms neglect, including psychological and sexual abuse, and financial exploitation by caregivers and family members. Seniors are at risk by a great number of causes. Some have diminished mental ...

Many homeowners in Georgia are continuing to struggle with the current economic crisis. Despite reports of modest improvements in the economy, a lot of Georgians are still floundering in the weak housing market. Stresses are compounded for those dealing with job loss or having their hours cut back. These financial pressures are making it increasingly difficult for people to afford their mortgage payments. Falling Home Values Can Limit the Choices Available to Homeowners Unfortunately, this problem is compounded by the fact that home values continue to drop. Homes ...