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Studies show AIDS drugs can prevent heterosexuals from acquiring HIV

Two new studies released early Wednesday show that AIDS drugs can prevent heterosexuals from acquiring HIV, adding to a growing number of new methods to slow the spread of the virus world-wide.

14 Jul 2011

Hopes dim for debt-limit deal

As President Barack Obama issued dire warnings about what will happen if lawmakers fail to raise the debt ceiling, one GOP leader advanced a "last-choice option" to avoid the consequences of failing to come to terms on a deficit-reduction package. Meanwhile, other news outlets offer advice on how to break the impasse.

14 Jul 2011

Mary Ann Liebert launches new journal on games, human health

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. announces the launch of Games for Health: Research, Development, and Clinical Applications (G4H), a new, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the development, use, and applications of game technology for improving physical and mental health and well-being.

14 Jul 2011

Insurance commissioners back away from supporting broker bill

State insurance regulators won't vote any time soon on whether to endorse a bill that would exempt insurance agents from part of health care reform. A task force of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners recently recommended endorsing the bill, sponsored by Rep. Mike Rogers, that would carve out agents' and brokers' commissions from a section of the new law that limits how much insurance companies can spend on administrative costs.

14 Jul 2011

European Respiratory Society Congress to take place on September 24, 2011

The 2011 European Respiratory Society Congress will take place at the Amsterdam RAI congress centre from Saturday 24 September to Wednesday 28 September 2011.

14 Jul 2011

Sebelius takes to the Hill to defend IPAB

During a Capitol Hill hearing, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius criticized the House-passed budget plan and its Medicare provisions and also defended the potential effectiveness and constitutionality of the health law's Independent Payment Advisory Board.

14 Jul 2011

Malaria prevention project using dirty sock odor awarded Grand Challenges grant

The odor of dirty socks can be used to attract mosquitoes and kill them before they're able to spread malaria, Fredros Okumu of the Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania said on Wednesday, Agence France-Presse reports.

14 Jul 2011

EC grants marketing authorization for BENLYSTA to treat SLE

GlaxoSmithKline and Human Genome Sciences, Inc. announced today that the European Commission has granted marketing authorization for BENLYSTA 10mg/kg as an add-on therapy in adult patients with active autoantibody-positive systemic lupus erythematosus, with a high degree of disease activity, despite standard therapy.

14 Jul 2011

Study shows benefits of onion waste on human health

More than 500,000 tonnes of onion waste are thrown away in the European Union each year. However, scientists say this could have a use as food ingredients. The brown skin and external layers are rich in fibre and flavonoids, while the discarded bulbs contain sulphurous compounds and fructans. All of these substances are beneficial to health.

14 Jul 2011

BBN to explore how brain processes large amounts of partial information

Raytheon BBN Technologies has been awarded $3 million in government funding to explore new methods of modeling the brain's ability to make sense of large amounts of haphazard, partial information.

14 Jul 2011

Positive data from Inovio's VGX-3400X Phase I study against H5N1 influenza

Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a leader in the development of therapeutic and preventive vaccines against cancers and infectious diseases, announced today that significant T cell and antibody responses were generated in its Phase I clinical study of VGX-3400X, a SynCon DNA vaccine for the prevention of avian H5N1 influenza delivered using intramuscular (IM) electroporation.

14 Jul 2011

IMM researcher wins prestigious Early Career Bayer Hemophilia Award

Vanessa Oliveira, researcher at the Instituto de Medicina Molecular in Portugal won a prestigious and competitive Early Career Bayer Hemophilia Award. Oliveira will develop a strategy to reprogramme the immune system of hemophilia patients to avoid immune targeting of the most used clotting therapeutics.

14 Jul 2011

Study examines teaching hospitals' so-called 'July Effect'

A new study reports that more patients receive worse-quality care or die at teaching hospitals during July because experienced residents shuffle off to greener pastures, leaving untrained "newbies" to take their spots and learn the ropes.

14 Jul 2011

Study explains how 'positivity effect' leads to successful aging

Whether we choose to accept or fight it, the fact is that we will all age, but will we do so successfully? Aging successfully has been linked with the "positivity effect", a biased tendency towards and preference for positive, emotionally gratifying experiences.

14 Jul 2011

Foreign aid helps lift families out of poverty

Britain's cutting of foreign assistance "is not … just a game of percentages; or a simple set of myths that can be countered to decide whether we spend 0.7 or 0.44 or even 0.01 percent of our national income on 'aid,'" Joe Cerrell, director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Europe office, writes in a "Foundation Blog" post.

14 Jul 2011

Study demonstrates how unconscious brain continues to process information

Brain damage can cause significant changes in behaviour, such as loss of cognitive skills, but also reveals much about how the nervous system deals with consciousness. New findings reported in the July 2011 issue of Elsevier's Cortex demonstrate how the unconscious brain continues to process information even when the conscious brain is incapacitated.

14 Jul 2011

New low-energy method for terminating cardiac fibrillation

An international team of scientists from the Max-Planck-Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Cornell University the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, the University Medicine Göttingen, the Rochester Institute of Technology, and the Institut Non-Linéaire de Nice have developed a new low-energy method for terminating life-threatening cardiac fibrillation of the heart.

14 Jul 2011

N.Y. ends plan to force hospitals to curb caesarean sections for Medicaid enrollees

The Wall Street Journal finds that the Cuomo administration plan had expected to cut the number of surgeries in half. Also, a new study finds giving higher payments to dentists helps increase access for children on Medicaid.

14 Jul 2011

No single approach might effectively improve Americans' dietary behavior, health

Will people eat healthier foods if fresh fruits and vegetables are available in stores near their homes? Will they eat less fast food if restaurants are not in their neighborhoods? These and other policy interventions may be useful steps toward better public health, but no single approach alone will effectively improve Americans' diets or stem the obesity epidemic, concludes a study by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

14 Jul 2011

'Sex' between viruses can create new influenza pandemic

A new University of Maryland-led study finds that 'sex' between the virus responsible for the 2009 flu pandemic (H1N1) and a common type of avian flu virus (H9N2) can produce offspring -- new combined flu viruses -- with the potential for creating a new influenza pandemic.

14 Jul 2011