Like all professions, medicine has its fair share of office politics — which can generate sniping, griping, eye-rolling and even the occasional temper tantrum. Yet, in a medical setting, can day-to-day rudeness do more than cause hurt feelings and wounded pride? Applying findings from several studies analyzing the cognitive impact of
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These days, with weekly recalls of everything from cribs and cough medicine to cars and cadmium-tainted products, it can be tough to keep track of which products are being yanked from shelves and storerooms. To make it somewhat easier, the major federal agencies that oversee recalls teamed up to form Recalls.gov, the one-stop site for
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Though roughly one third of all deadly crashes take place during the summer months, more than 80% of Americans think that winter is the most dangerous time to be on the road, according to the results of a new poll conducted by researchers at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Excellence in Rural Safety. And, not only are there more
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A new Gallup poll of more than 136,000 people from 132 countries around the world and a broad range of ethnic and economic backgrounds finds that, while people generally associated having more money with a greater satisfaction with their overall quality of life, when researchers focused on other measures of happiness — day to day
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Amid growing concerns about antibiotic-resistant bacteria, a team of researchers from the Netherlands may be developing a sweet way to fend off harmful bacteria. A new study in the July issue of the FASEB Journal details their research investigating the antimicrobial properties of an ingredient in honey known as defensin-1. Researchers
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Jamie Oliver, the British celebrity chef whose recent U.S. reality show, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, initially had a mixed reception among the people whose school lunch program he was attempting to overhaul, is now getting some flack from the health minister back on his home turf. His School Dinners initiative to get junk food out of
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Research presented this week at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Rome suggests that men whose mothers had several alcohol drinks per week during pregnancy may have lower quality sperm. The study, conducted by researchers from the University of Aarhus in Denmark, studied 347 men born
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In the search for a form of male contraception that can rival the female birth control pill, a team of researchers from Israel may have just made a breakthrough. As the Telegraph reports, in initial animal trials the team of researchers found that a pill they’d developed — which works by stripping sperm of a protein necessary to
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New research published in the journal Pediatrics finds that giving children the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) and chicken pox vaccines in two separate shots reduces the risk for febrile seizures, or fever-related convulsions that are not associated with conditions such as epilepsy. The analysis was based on data for 459,000 children
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A new study from researchers at the University of Arizona and Loma Linda University finds that reusable shopping bags can harbor potentially harmful bacteria if they aren’t cleaned — and 97% of people surveyed said they’d never washed theirs. Yet the study, funded by the American Chemistry Council, also found that washing the reusable
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In the ongoing effort to better understand, diagnose, treat and hopefully one day even prevent the devastating mental decline of Alzheimer’s disease, researchers are taking a broad range of approaches — and some are even finding clues in unlikely places. As the New York Times reports, a new technique that combines a dye and brain scan
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Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab have come up with a way to test vision that doesn’t involve any hefty optometry equipment or even a visit to the eye doctor. A small, simple plastic device they’ve developed, when attached to the screen of a cell phone, can scan the eye and determine the appropriate
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Less than two months after a California county voted to ban toys from children’s meals at fast food restaurants, the chain known for the Hamburgler and Ronald McDonald may face a lawsuit over the the trinkets it tosses into Happy Meals. Public health research and advocacy group, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), sent
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