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Employees behaving badly in the workplace

Over 86% of Australia’s professional workers have deliberately ignored or snubbed a colleague at work at least once, according to the findings of a new study by SACS Consulting into counter-productive workplace behaviours (CWBs) announced today.

10 Sep 2012

Health inequalities in Europe need action

Health inequality in Europe is resulting in huge social and economic costs to the region, and progress towards reducing health inequalities should be one of the main criteria by which the effectiveness of health systems and governments as a whole are assessed, according to a Review published in The Lancet.

10 Sep 2012

FAO launches water management framework at World Water Week opening ceremony in Sweden

At the opening ceremony of World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden, on Monday, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) "launched a framework that will help combat food insecurity by providing methods to better manage water resources in agriculture and reduce waste," the U.N. News Centre reports.

29 Aug 2012

Drought, food security fears boost small-scale irrigation use in South Asia, Africa, study finds

"Farmers in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are increasingly taking up small-scale irrigation schemes as drought threatens the security of food supplies, a report by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) said," Reuters reports.

26 Aug 2012

U.N. calls on countries to develop national drought, climate policies

"The world urgently needs to adopt drought-management policies as farmers from Africa to India struggle with lack of rainfall and the United States endures the worst drought it has experienced in decades, top officials with the U.N. weather agency said Tuesday," the Associated Press reports.

23 Aug 2012

Climate change poses risks to food supply, may lead to price spike, experts warn

"Downpours and heat waves caused by climate change could disrupt food supplies from the fields to the supermarkets, raising the risk of more price spikes such as this year's leap triggered by drought in the United States," Reuters reports.

18 Aug 2012

Mullite can reduce pollution produced by diesel vehicles

Engineers at a company co-founded by a University of Texas at Dallas professor have identified a material that can reduce the pollution produced by vehicles that run on diesel fuel.

17 Aug 2012

Tobacco use epidemic estimates show urgent need to redouble control efforts

New estimates illustrate the epidemic of tobacco use for over half of the world’s population (representing more than 3 billion adults living in the UK, USA, and 14 developing countries), with around 852 million tobacco consumers (661 million smokers and 247 million smokeless tobacco users).

17 Aug 2012

U.S. DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory develops new carbon cycling model

A new carbon cycling model developed at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory better accounts for the carbon dioxide-releasing activity of microbes in the ground, improving scientists' understanding of the role soil will play in future climate change.

17 Aug 2012

Medical ethics: an interview with Anita Silvers

Medical ethics assists healthcare professionals to make decisions respectful of persons who happen to be their patients.

13 Aug 2012

China must bring together different agencies to address water shortages, policy paper says

In a policy paper published in Science on Thursday, researchers praised China's January 2011 plan to address water shortages and conservation in the nation, but "the researchers said this commitment won't be enough unless disparate agencies learn to communicate and coordinate with each other," Reuters reports.

12 Aug 2012

Organ donation: an interview with David Shaw

Most donors die in intensive care units, frequently after car accidents. Once it is clear that recovery is out of the question, families will be told that further treatment is futile and the issue of donation can be sensitively raised.

9 Aug 2012

Improve investment in agriculture to meet growing demands

Extreme weather is forcing grain and meat prices to rise, and food production will have to increase about 60 percent over the next 40 years to meet a growing world population, but "there are solutions to these daunting problems," Catherine Bertini, former director of the U.N. World Food Programme and the 2003 World Food Prize laureate, and Dan Glickman, former secretary of agriculture, write in a Politico opinion piece.

8 Aug 2012

Preventing falls in older people through balance and strength training

Balance and strength training that is integrated into everyday activities can reduce the number of falls among older people by almost a third, finds a study published on bmj.com today.

8 Aug 2012

UCSB researcher hopes to find out contaminants in urban water environment

What contaminants lurk in the urban subsurface, and what happens to them once they're there? Do they make their way into storm drains and creeks to reach groundwater, or even oceans? Or do they naturally attenuate as they migrate through soils, somehow allowing them to self-cleanse as they travel? A UC Santa Barbara researcher hopes to find out, thanks to a generous new gift to fund her work.

8 Aug 2012

Organ donation wishes should not be allowed to be vetoed by families says ethicist

Families should not be allowed to veto dead relatives’ organ donation wishes, argues an ethicist on bmj.com today.

8 Aug 2012

Study looks at why and to whom people give souvenir gifts

Although it may not seem like much, the small wooden figurine Grandma brought back from the Holy Land has been blessed. She gives the souvenir to her grandchildren knowing she has done her job: deliver God into their lives.

8 Aug 2012

Study finds female athletes rarely and ineffectively used as ad spokespeople

Your best chance to see a female athlete endorsing a product will be during the next few weeks. The Olympics' commercial breaks may be littered with female swimmers, runners and gymnasts, but don't expect to see them much again until the next Olympics. American companies rarely employ female athletes as spokespeople and when they do, according to two University of Delaware professors, they most often do it poorly.

31 Jul 2012

Yeast gene can increase ethanol production yield by up to 34%

iDiverse announced that it has discovered a yeast gene that when inserted into yeast and properly modulated can increase ethanol production yield by up to 34%.

23 Jul 2012

Green plants in city streets can effectively reduce levels of air pollutants

Trees, bushes and other greenery growing in the concrete-and-glass canyons of cities can reduce levels of two of the most worrisome air pollutants by eight times more than previously believed, a new study has found. A report on the research appears in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology.

19 Jul 2012