Social Sciences
MANHATTAN -- A Kansas State University researcher has found a link between physical and mental well-being that employees and employers may be able to capitalize on to improve both the health, and potentially the wealth, of their organization in these turbulent economic times.
Thomas A. Wright, Jon Wefald Leadership Chair in Business Administration and professor of management at K-State, published his findings on the relationship between employee psychological well-being and cardiovascular health in the February issue of the Journal of Organizational Behavior.
Wright said both physical and…
March 18, 2009 – (BRONX, NY) – Scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have identified genetic markers that signal poor outcomes for patients with head and neck cancer. These findings could one day lead to a genetic test that could help select or predict successful treatment options for patients with this type of cancer. The results were published in the American Journal of Pathology.
Head and neck cancer refers to tumors in the mouth, throat or larynx (voice box). Each year, about 40,000 men and women in the U.S. develop head and neck cancer, making it the…
Epilepsy is a common medical condition characterized by convulsions and short periods of confusion. It affects more than 50 million people worldwide. But intractable epilepsy, which affects more than 1 million Americans and is often resistant to drug treatment and surgery, is arguably worse.
But in a just completed clinical trial, a unique nerve-stimulation treatment for intractable epilepsy reduced the number of seizures by more than 50 percent. In the March edition of the journal Neurology, UCLA neurology professor Christopher M. DeGiorgio and colleagues report the results of the long-…
CLEVELAND—Creating a family life incorporating the care needs of a child dependent on technology is a daunting task. Much of this task seems to fall upon mothers to help everyone in the family adjust. However, mothers often need help of their own to cope with the challenges of raising these children, a research study from Case Western Reserve University has found.
"The family takes its cues from me," one mother told Valerie Toly, PhD, R.N., C.P.N.P., an Instructor of Nursing at the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University.
Toly's research with 103 mothers of…
Characteristic changes in the DNA of medulloblastoma, the most frequent malignant brain tumor in childhood, indicate precisely how aggressively the tumor will continue to spread and what the chances of disease relapse are. Researchers at the Center for Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine at the Heidelberg University Hospital and the German Cancer Research Center have discovered this correlation. With this new set of tumor markers, the intensity of treatment can be adjusted individually and the potentially damaging effects reduced. The results have now been published online in the prestigious…
Scientists at The University of Nottingham have uncovered a vital new biological clue that could lead to more effective treatments for a children's brain tumour that currently kills more than 60 per cent of young sufferers.
Clinician –scientists at the University's Children's Brain Tumour Research Centre, working on behalf of the Children's Cancer and Leukaemia Group (CCLG), have studied the role of the WNT biological pathway in central nervous system primitive neuroectodermal tumours (CNS PNET), a type of brain tumour that predominantly occurs in children and presently has a very poor…
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – An X-ray-guided spinal tap procedure fails more than half of the time in young infants and should be used sparingly, if at all, for those patients, according to a new study done by researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
The study also shows that the X-ray-guided form of spinal tap, called fluoroscopy-guided lumbar puncture, causes a doubling in risk of bleeding for patients older than 80 compared to younger patients and that the risk of bleeding caused by the procedure can be reduced by doing the puncture at the middle of the lower back rather than at…
Las Vegas, NV—March 18, 2009—With 17 percent of US children between ages 2 and 19 classified as obese, new research shows that parents may not be recognizing their own children's risk factors. A new study in the Journal of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners shows that parents are likely to misperceive their child's weight – especially those parents who are overweight themselves.
Since parents are the most influential factor in laying the foundation for early childhood weight problems, researchers set out to assess the disconnect that exists between a parents' perception of their…
Although not having many close friends contributes to poorer health for many older adults, those who also feel lonely face even greater health risks, research at the University of Chicago suggests. Older people who are able to adjust to being alone don't have the same health problems.
The study is the first to examine the relationships between health and two different types of isolation. Researchers measured the degree to which older adults are socially connected and socially active. They also assessed whether older adults feel lonely and whether they expect that friends and family would…
An important new study challenges the widespread perception that bulimia primarily affects privileged, white teenagers such as "Gossip Girl" character Blair Waldorf, who battled bulimia on the show earlier this season.
Rather, girls who are African American are 50 percent more likely than girls who are white to be bulimic, the researchers found, and girls from families in the lowest income bracket studied are 153 percent more likely to be bulimic than girls from the highest income bracket.
"As it turns out, we learned something surprising from our data about who bulimia actually affects, not…