INDIANAPOLIS — An Indiana University School of Medicine study has determined that a patient's socioeconomic status has more influence than race on physician diagnosis of whether a child's injury was accidental or caused by abuse. When presented with scenarios that could possibly but not obviously indicate child abuse, 2,109 physicians from across the United States who participated in the study were most likely to suspect maltreatment rather than accident for white children from families with low socioeconomic status than for black children with low socioeconomic status ...

Drs. Helene T. Nguyen, DPM, Vilayvanh Sysounthone, DPM and Yong J. Zhu, DPM, podiatrists in Hackettstown, NJ, are pleased to announce the recent merging of their Parsippany office with Feet 'N Beyond of New Jersey, P.A. Medical and surgical podiatric services are now available during clinical hours or by appointment at the two New Jersey locations convenient to Essex, Morris, Passaic, Warren and Sussex County residents and businesses. "With our recent merger, I look forward to providing our patients with superior quality foot and ankle care. Growing the practice ...

Troy, N.Y. – Graphene is the thinnest material known to science. The nanomaterial is so thin, in fact, water often doesn't even know it's there. Engineering researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Rice University coated pieces of gold, copper, and silicon with a single layer of graphene, and then placed a drop of water on the coated surfaces. Surprisingly, the layer of graphene proved to have virtually no impact on the manner in which water spreads on the surfaces. Results of the study were published Sunday in the journal Nature Materials. The findings ...

Chicago -- U.S. states that enacted unilateral divorce laws saw substantial increases in violent crime in the years following the reform, according to research in the Journal of Labor Economics. But the ill-effects of the new laws appear to be largely temporary. The research found an average 9 percent increase in violent crime after a state enacted a unilateral divorce law, which allows one spouse to end a marriage without the consent of the other. The increase in crime was mainly confined to the first two decades after the reform and was mostly attributable to individuals ...

Nurturing mothers have garnered accolades for rescuing skinned knees on the playground and coaxing their children to sleep with lullabies. Now they're gaining merit for their offspring's physical health in middle age. In a recent study published in the journal Psychological Science, Brandeis psychologist Margie Lachman with Gregory Miller and colleagues at the University of British Columbia and the University of California, Los Angeles reveal that while children raised in families with low socioeconomic status (SES) frequently go on to have high rates of chronic illness ...

WASHINGTON, DC – A Georgetown University Medical Center professor says the voluntary action taken by two research teams to temporarily halt work involving the highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 is "laudable." In the researchers' statement, published today by Science and Nature, the authors stated that they "recognize that we and the rest of the scientific community need to clearly explain the benefits of this important research and the measures taken to minimize its possible risks." The statement comes in the wake of a debate following the U.S. government's request ...

Leading Saginaw dentist, Dr. Greg Herzler, remains up-to-date with technology through the launch of his practice's mobile website. At the current rate of growth, most people will own a smart-phone by 2013 and be capable of browsing the web. A mobile website is designed to load quickly, preferably in about four seconds, while a desktop site can take much longer on a mobile phone because of connection speeds. Dr. Herzler, dentist in Saginaw, MI, is also aware that patients want their information now - they don't want to wait. Patients are often on-the-go, and need to ...

Graphene is largely transparent to the eye and, as it turns out, largely transparent to water. A new study by scientists at Rice University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) has determined that gold, copper and silicon get just as wet when clad by a single continuous layer of graphene as they would without. The research, reported this week in the online edition of Nature Materials, is significant for scientists learning to fine-tune surface coatings for a variety of applications. "The extreme thinness of graphene makes it a totally non-invasive coating," ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – For more than 40 years, scientists and physicians have thought eating a high-fiber diet lowered a person's risk of diverticulosis, a disease of the large intestine in which pouches develop in the colon wall. A new study of more than 2,000 people reveals the opposite may be true. The study, conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine , found that consuming a diet high in fiber raised, rather than lowered, the risk of developing diverticulosis. The findings also counter the commonly-held belief that ...

In California's Death Valley, death is looking just a bit closer. Geologists have determined that the half-mile-wide Ubehebe Crater, formed by a prehistoric volcanic explosion, was created far more recently than previously thought—and that conditions for a sequel may exist today. Up to now, geologists were vague on the age of the 600-foot deep crater, which formed when a rising plume of magma hit a pocket of underground water, creating an explosion. The most common estimate was about 6,000 years, based partly on Native American artifacts found under debris. ...

This press release is available in French. Montreal -- Elderly patients who have visited an emergency department (ED) are three times more likely to develop respiratory or gastrointestinal infections in the week following their return to a long-term care facility, such as a Centre d'Hébergement de Soins de Longue Durée (CHLSD). These are the findings of a new Canadian study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal today. "There certainly seems to be a benefit to isolating residents in the 7 days following their return to a long-term care facility, said ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Greenhouse bedding plant growers can save themselves time, money or possibly both by giving cuttings in propagation more light, according to a Purdue University study. Flower growers use cuttings from Central America and Africa to start spring bedding plants in greenhouses during winter and early spring. Those cloudy days and cool temperatures make propagation time- and energy-intensive. Roberto Lopez, an assistant professor of horticulture, and horticulture graduate students Chris Currey and Veronica Hutchinson study ways to minimize inputs and ...

If you think a Chihuahua doesn't have much in common with a Rottweiler, you might be on to something. An ancient dog skull, preserved in a cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia for 33,000 years, presents some of the oldest known evidence of dog domestication and, together with equally ancient dog remains from a cave in Belgium, indicates that domestication of dogs may have occurred repeatedly in different geographic locations rather than with a single domestication event. In other words, man's best friends may have originated from more than one ancient ancestor, contrary ...

Dr. Scott Peters, leading dentist in Carlsbad, understands that injuries can be prevented, but not all injuries can be avoided. To accommodate patients who require immediate dental attention, Dr. Carlsbad offers responsive dental emergency care for his patients in Carlsbad. "When teeth are chipped, cracked or lost, patients need to act quickly in order to preserve the tooth and prevent additional complications. We're here to help patients in a time of an emergency, so we offer emergency care that allows a patient to get in to our office right away for the immediate ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Might a penguin's next meal be affected by the exhaust from your tailpipe? The answer may be yes, when you add your exhaust fumes to the total amount of carbon dioxide lofted into the atmosphere by humans since the industrial revolution. One-third of that carbon dioxide is absorbed by the world's oceans, making them more acidic and affecting marine life. A UC Santa Barbara marine scientist and a team of 18 other researchers have reported results of the broadest worldwide study of ocean acidification to date. Acidification is known to be a direct ...

Our Valleys publications will be marking its first anniversary in Santa Clarita Valley to celebrate a revolutionary year of service to both the English and Spanish communities in Santa Clarita Valley. The event is to be hosted at their offices located in 17960 Sierra Hwy, Santa Clarita, CA and local businesses and the public are welcome. When the magazine started, the concept was that of a great magazine. In just one year, there has been tremendous growth and metamorphosis that has made it the best advertisement concept with sharp appeal. Its use of digital technology ...

In cultures that permit men to take multiple wives, the intra-sexual competition that occurs causes greater levels of crime, violence, poverty and gender inequality than in societies that institutionalize and practice monogamous marriage. That is a key finding of a new University of British Columbia-led study that explores the global rise of monogamous marriage as a dominant cultural institution. The study suggests that institutionalized monogamous marriage is rapidly replacing polygamy because it has lower levels of inherent social problems. "Our goal was to understand ...

Family companions who routinely accompany older adults to physician office visits could be helpful to health care quality improvement efforts, according to a new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The authors found that three-quarters of older adults who attend physician visits with a family companion are consistently accompanied over time, nearly always by the same companion. The results are featured in the January 2012 issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. "Continuity of care is a central tenant of an ...

A new gene therapy method developed by University of Florida researchers has the potential to treat a common form of blindness that strikes both youngsters and adults. The technique works by replacing a malfunctioning gene in the eye with a normal working copy that supplies a protein necessary for light-sensitive cells in the eye to function. The findings are published today (Monday, Jan. 23) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences online. Several complex and costly steps remain before the gene therapy technique can be used in humans, but once at that stage, ...

BOSTON, MA -- Physician referral rates in the United States doubled between 1999 and 2009, a new study finds, an increase that likely contributes to the rising costs of health care. The increase in referral rates coincides with an increase in chronic conditions such as Type 2 diabetes. The results are staggering: over the same time period, the estimated absolute number of visits resulting in a referral increased 159 per cent, from 40.6 million to 105 million. "If you add that up, it's real money," said Bruce Landon, senior author of the paper and professor of health ...

CHICAGO—Exposure to iodinated contrast media during imaging procedures is associated with changes in thyroid function, and increased risk of developing hyperthyroidism, according to a report in the January 23 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. "Iodinated contrast media (ICM) are commonly administered pharmaceutical agents," the authors write as background information. ICM are frequently used in scans and imaging procedures such as cardiac catheterization and computed tomography (CT scans). "Although certain complications of ICM ...

Quantifying how sore a person is after a long workout is a challenge for doctors and researchers, but scientists from Loma Linda and Asuza Pacific Universities think they may have figured it out. Their research article describing a new technique to measure muscle soreness will be published in the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE). Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) or exercise-induced muscle damage (EIMD) is one of the most common sports injuries, but without a reliable method of quantifying muscle soreness, assessing treatments is difficult. Traditionally, ...

AURORA, Colo. (Jan. 23, 2012) - With growing concern that excessive levels of fructose may pose a great health risk – causing high blood pressure, kidney disease and diabetes – researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, along with their colleagues at the University of Florida, set out to see if two common sweeteners in western diets differ in their effects on the body in the first few hours after ingestion. The study, recently published in the journal Metabolism, took a closer look at high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and table sugar (sucrose) and was ...

Researchers at the University of Michigan analyzed the tremendous cost of diagnosing peripheral neuropathy and found that less expensive, more effective tests are less likely to be used. Almost one-quarter of patients receiving neuropathy diagnoses undergo high-cost, low-yield MRIs while very few receive low-cost, high-yield glucose tolerance tests, according to the study that will be published Jan. 23 in the Archives of Internal Medicine. The research was led by Brian Callaghan, M.D., assistant professor of neurology at the University of Michigan Medical School. Patients ...

Simon Fraser University associate professor James Wakeling is adding to the arsenal of increasingly sophisticated medical imaging tools with a new signal-processing method for viewing muscle activation details that have never been seen before. Fascinated with the mechanics of muscle movement in people and animals, Wakeling has developed a novel method using ultrasound imaging, 3D motion-capture technology and proprietary data-processing software to scan and capture 3D maps of the muscle structure — in just 90 seconds. It's a medical-imaging breakthrough because previous ...