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Employee harassment may increase due to loopholes in health care law
Date: Jul-25-2013The contrasting incentives of employers and employees under the Affordable Care Act ultimately may result in increased employee harassment and retaliation claims, two University of Illinois law professors say in a paper they co-wrote. As firms grapple with the significant cost increases associated with the new health care legislation, the possibility emerges that employers would harass or retaliate against employees in order to avoid the law's financial penalties, according to Peter Molk and Suja A. Thomas...
When considering health care costs, US physicians prioritize patients' best interests
Date: Jul-25-2013A new study of attitudes about health care costs reveals that an overwhelming majority of U.S. physicians feel a responsibility to address costs, but prioritize their obligations to patients' best interests over cost concerns. Results of the random survey of 2,500 U.S. physicians are published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). "Physicians feel stuck in a difficult position," says lead author Jon Tilburt, M.D., Mayo Clinic's Biomedical Ethics Program and Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery...
Development of non-toxic flame retardants
Date: Jul-25-2013Flame retardants are often extremely harmful to health. Despite this, they are found in many types of synthetic materials which would otherwise ignite quickly. Empa researchers have now succeeded in producing non-harmful flame retardants. Synthetic materials made from organic polymers usually burn very well due to their high carbon content; when turned into foams, they ignite even more easily - and, depending on their chemical compositions, they produce toxic gases such as hydrogen cyanide or carbon monoxide...
How death spreads throughout an organism at the end of its life
Date: Jul-25-2013The final biological events in the life of a worm are described in a new article, published in the open access journal PLOS Biology. The paper reveals how death spreads like a wave from cell to cell until the whole organism is deceased. The deaths of individual cells trigger a chemical chain reaction leading to the breakdown of cell components and a build-up of molecular debris. The molecular mechanisms of this process are reasonably well understood at a cellular level, but far less is known about how death spreads throughout an organism at the end of its life...
A patient's recovery from subarachnoid hemorrhage can be compromised by significant other's excessive fears
Date: Jul-25-2013Researchers from Durham University and Kings College London (United Kingdom) and the University of Erlangen-Nurnberg (Germany) found that patients who have suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) may not recover psychosocially as well as expected if their significant other is excessively fearful about the possibility of SAH recurrence. The researchers' findings are discussed in "Family and friends' fears of recurrence: impact on the patient's recovery after subarachnoid hemorrhage. Clinical article," by Judith Covey, Ph.D., Adam J. Noble, Ph.D., and Thomas Schenk, Ph.D...
Dance performance improved by 'going through the motions'
Date: Jul-25-2013Expert ballet dancers seem to glide effortlessly across the stage, but learning the steps is both physically and mentally demanding. New research suggests that dance marking - loosely practicing a routine by "going through the motions" - may improve the quality of dance performance by reducing the mental strain needed to perfect the movements...
It's safer to live in major cities than urban areas in the US
Date: Jul-25-2013Overturning a commonly-held belief that cities are inherently more dangerous than suburban and rural communities, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have found that risk of death from injuries is lowest on average in urban counties compared to suburban and rural counties across the U.S...
Brain development findings may shed light on neurological disorders such as autism
Date: Jul-25-2013Dennis O'Leary of the Salk Institute was the first scientist to show that the basic functional architecture of the cortex, the largest part of the human brain, was genetically determined during development. But as it so often does in science, answering one question opened up many others. O'Leary wondered what if the layout of the cortex wasn't fixed? What would happen if it were changed? In the August issue of Nature Neuroscience, O'Leary, holder of the Vincent J...
Manufacture of pharmaceuticals and other compounds could be streamlined by chemical reaction
Date: Jul-25-2013Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have discovered a new chemical reaction that has the potential to lower the cost and streamline the manufacture of compounds ranging from agricultural chemicals to pharmaceutical drugs. The reaction resolves a long-standing challenge in organic chemistry in creating phenolic compounds from aromatic hydrocarbons quickly and cheaply. Phenolic compounds, or phenols, are broadly used as disinfectants, fungicides and drugs to treat many ailments such as Parkinson's disease. Creating a phenol seems deceptively simple...
A step toward developing strategies for treatment of bacterial super-infections
Date: Jul-25-2013A recent study published in the July issue of the Journal of Immunology helps explain why some humans contract bacterial super-infections like pneumonia with influenza. The research was led by Le Bonheur Pediatrician-in-Chief Jon McCullers, MD - an infectious disease specialist who is also chair of the Department of Pediatrics for the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and adjunct faculty at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital...
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