Cigarettes are a particular problem among Asian-American immigrants, where smoking has been estimated to be more than 10 percent above the national average.

Yet for many Korean-American immigrants, the social benefits of cigarettes may trump any health concerns, according to a new baseline study of Korean smokers from the Center for Asian Health at Temple University, conducted by Grace Ma, PhD, professor of public health and director of the Center.

The study involved on

A new study suggests that the risk of transmitting the virus that causes most cases of genital herpes could be cut in half by more testing and informing sexual partners of infection. The study is published in the July 1 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, now available online.

Until recently, there was little evidence to show that knowledge of infection would lead to decreased transmission of herpes simplex virus (HSV) to others. But Anna Wald, MD, MPH, and colleagues at the Un

Swedish-Danish collaboration paid off — the two neighboring countries will be joint hosts of the 10th PCST Conference in the spring of 2008.

This is not only the first time the conference is taking place in the Nordic countries but also the first time it is to be jointly hosted by two countries.

The application was backed by the Swedish Research Council and the Danish Science Communication together with Malmö University College, Lund University, Copenhagen University

People aged 70 years and older with limited literacy skills are one and one half to two times as likely to have poor health and poor health care access as people with adequate or higher reading ability, according to a study led by researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco.

Elders with limited literacy, which the researchers define as a reading level lower than ninth grade, were one and a half times more likely than other study par

Neither of the two emergency surgical interventions used to correct perforated necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), a common and dangerous complication of prematurity, appears to significantly improve an infant’s survival and later health, according to a study by UAB researchers and colleagues in the May 25 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.

In the first clinical trial to examine this issue, a team of scientists from UAB, Yale University and other sites studied 117 preterm infants

A study led by UCSF neurologist S. Claiborne Johnston, MD, has shown that coiling of ruptured brain aneurysms is very effective during long-term follow-up, similar to outcomes with surgical clipping.

Although results of a previous trial suggested that coiling was superior to surgical clipping one year after treatment, a lack of data on long-term outcomes has been a major concern, according to Johnston. The study results are published in the June 2006 issue of the journal Strok

Youth with bipolar disorder misread facial expressions as hostile and show heightened neural reactions when they focus on emotional aspects of neutral faces, researchers at the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) have discovered. The study provides some of the first clues to the underlying workings of the episodes of mania and depression that disrupt friendships, school, and family life in up to one percent of children.

Brain scans showed tha

The ease of pronouncing the name of a company and its stock ticker symbol influences how well that stock performs in the days immediately after its initial public offering, two Princeton University psychologists have found.

A new study of initial public offerings (IPOs) on two major American stock exchanges shows that people are more likely to purchase newly offered stocks that have easily pronounced names than those that do not, according to Princeton’s Adam Alter and Dan

The Academy of Finland Research Council of Health sees that the impact of funding can be improved for instance by extending the duration of research programmes and by streamlining programme contents. Impact assessment should be taken into account from the very beginning of programme planning and development of smaller fields of research should be continued for example by means of discipline assessments. This is the conclusion the Research Council comes to in the report “Strategic funding for enhanc

From a soft drink in a mega-size cup to a jumbo order of fries, many fast food restaurants let you upsize your meal for pennies — seemingly a great value.

But there’s a hidden cost to those larger portions, even beyond the health consequences of gaining weight. A team of University of Wisconsin-Madison nutritional scientists has calculated how much money a single bout of overeating can cost over the following year, according to a study to be published in June 2006 in the Journ

Future of US science depends on it

What do you want to be when you grow up? Eighth-graders asked this question in 1988 were two to three times more likely to earn science and engineering degrees in college if their answer was a science-related career.

The National Research Council recently reported the United States is slipping in its leadership in science and technology fields and recommended “vastly improving” K-12 education in math and science.

Research by

In a new report published today the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) sets out the findings of a review it has commissioned that evaluates both the needs of non-academic employers for highly skilled social scientists, and the extent to which social science PhD-holders in such employment are using the skills and knowledge developed during their doctorate.

The sustained development of a highly skilled workforce is essential to underpinning the quality of social scientific research

When used indoors under certain conditions, many common household cleaners and air fresheners emit toxic pollutants at levels that may lead to health risks, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Exposure levels to some of the pollutants – and to the secondary pollutants formed when some of the products mix with ozone – may exceed regulatory guidelines when a large surface is cleaned in a sma

A new study from the University of Michigan found that traffic metering systems that incorporate new algorithms for merging could reduce the seriousness of traffic slowdowns that originate near freeway on-ramps.

Craig Davis, a retired Ford Motor Co. research scientist and current adjunct professor at U-M, studied highway merging to see how current on-ramp traffic meter systems could be made more effective. Currently, meter systems try to improve traffic flow by letting a certain

New research by Liverpool John Moores University indicates that the Government’s Parental Leave and Flexible Working Request initiatives are failing to help working parents, particularly mothers, achieve a better work life balance.

Dr Kay Standing, who led the LJMU research, explains: “The Flexible Working Request is a move in the right direction, but its voluntary nature means it lacks any real power to help working parents. Very few people know that they are entitled to Par

A new study by Florida State University researchers has found that people who were verbally abused as children grow up to be self-critical adults prone to depression and anxiety.

People who were verbally abused had 1.6 times as many symptoms of depression and anxiety as those who had not been verbally abused and were twice as likely to have suffered a mood or anxiety disorder over their lifetime, according to psychology Professor Natalie Sachs-Ericsson, the study’s lead auth