For the nearly 15 million Americans currently unemployed, this year's Labor Day holiday may be less a celebration of a brief respite from work and more a cruel reminder that, despite glimmers of hope in the U.S. economy, there remains scant opportunity for many to rejoin the workforce. Very few people don't know someone - a friend, relative, or former colleague - who has lost a job amid the recession: The economy has shed some 6.7 million jobs since December 2007, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and some experts fret the U.S. could be in store for a "jobless recovery" in 2010.
Against a backdrop of vanishing paychecks and dwindling savings, despair and depression are rampant, according to a study released on Sept. 3 by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. The study, The Anguish of Unemployment, is one of the first and most comprehensive of its kind, according to its authors, who say they sought to produce a representative view of unemployed workers' attitudes. The report was conducted through surveys of 1,200 people who are currently unemployed or have been in the past 12 months. The BLS reported last month that the number of people who had been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer rose by 584,000 in July to 5 million, the highest level since 1948 when the data were first collected.
Scientists were able to isolate two antibodies responsible for resistance to the disease in an African patient. The discovery could be key to the development of a vaccine.
After 15 years of futile searching for a vaccine against the AIDS virus, researchers are reporting the tantalizing discovery of antibodies that can prevent the virus from multiplying in the body and producing severe disease.
They do not have a vaccine yet, but they may well have a road map toward the production of one.
Kate Devlin
TelegraphWed, 02 Sep 2009 10:00 UTC
© GettyUnder the guidelines the decision to diagnose that a patient is close to death is made by the entire medical team treating them, including a senior doctor
In a letter to
The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.
Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.
But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn.
© Unknown
One of the whistleblowers in the Pfizer healthcare fraud scandal has said he felt he was "swimming upstream" when the firm was illegally promoting drugs.
"It's hard to do what's right when everyone else around you is following management sales directive," John Kopchinski told the BBC's World Today.
Mr Kopchinski was awarded $50m (£31m)for helping expose Pfizer's wrongdoing.
Pfizer is paying $2.3bn after promoting four drugs for conditions different to those for which they were approved.
Ray Kerins, a spokesman for Pfizer, said the company had a strong commitment to compliance transparency.
After a successful birth, opting not to breast-feed may trigger evolved mourning behaviors
Discussions of breastfeeding versus bottle-feeding usually focus on the baby: What's best in terms of nutrition? Or an infant's future mental health?
But we're going to take a different route. Let's talk about the mother, and more specifically, the changes in her body as it readies itself to nourish a hungry newborn. With her breasts enlarged and hormones flowing, what happens if no newborn appears to suckle? How will her body - and brain - react?
High-school put-downs are such a staple of teen culture that many educators don't take them seriously. However, a University of Illinois study suggests that classroom disruptions and psychologically hostile school environments can contribute to a climate in which good students have difficulty learning and students who are behind have trouble catching up.
"We need to get away from the idea that bullying is always physical. Bullying can also include verbal harassment, which can be just as damaging and detrimental to student learning," said Christy Lleras, a U of I assistant professor of human and community development.
The study used data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study and included 10,060 African American, Latino, and white tenth graders in 659 U.S. high schools. It is one of the first to look at the national incidence of verbal harassment in public and private high schools, she said.
It's no secret that alcohol use among college students can cause a number of problems, including injury, violence and even death. A new study has examined the impact of drink discounts at college bars, finding that low alcohol prices at drinking establishments pose genuine threats to public health and safety.
Results will be published in the November issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research and are currently available at Early View.
"It may seem intuitive that cheaper alcohol can lead to higher intoxication levels and related consequences - such as fighting, drunk driving, sexual victimization, injury, even death - especially among the vulnerable college student population," said Ryan J. O'Mara, a graduate research fellow at the University of Florida and corresponding author for the study. "Nonetheless, 'drink specials' and other alcohol discounts and promotions remain a common feature of college bars in campus communities in the United States
Every March, most Americans welcome the switch to daylight saving time because of the longer days, but also dread losing an hour of sleep after they move their clocks forward. Now a new study shows that losing just an hour of sleep could pose some dangerous consequences for those in hazardous work environments.
The findings are reported in the September issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology, which is published by the American Psychological Association.
"One hour of lost sleep may not seem like a lot. But our findings suggest it could have an impact on people's ability to stay alert on the job and prevent serious injuries." said the article's lead author, Christopher Barnes, PhD. Barnes and co-author David Wagner, PhD, were both doctoral students in organizational behavior at Michigan State University when they conducted this research.
A study in the Sept.1 issue of the journal Sleep shows that current or past exposure to workplace bullying is associated with increased sleep disturbances. Associations also were found between observed bullying and sleep disruption, indicating that bullying has detrimental effects even when it is experienced indirectly.
The study shows a high prevalence of workplace bullying, with 11 percent of women and nine percent of men experiencing "hostile behavior" in the work environment at least weekly and for at least six months during the previous 12 months. After adjustment for covariates such as age, occupation, weekly work hours and depressive symptoms, exposure to bullying was significantly associated with self-reported sleep disturbances.
Living without a car in close proximity to fast food restaurants is associated with excess body mass index and weight gain, according to a University of Pittsburgh study available online and published in the September issue of the Journal of Urban Health. Indeed, adults in areas with high fast food concentration who didn't have a car were as much as 12 pounds heavier than those who lived in neighborhoods that lacked such restaurants.
"Owning a car is generally associated with a more sedentary lifestyle and excess weight gain because people spend more time in their cars and less time walking," said Sanae Inagami, M.D., study lead author and assistant professor, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Yet, when Inagami and her colleagues looked at whether a high concentration of fast food restaurants impacted this association, they found that not owning a car in areas where fast food was more readily available increased the risk of obesity.
