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Social Media Can Help And Hurt Companies During Product Recalls

Social Media Can Help And Hurt Companies During Product Recalls

Companies are starting to embrace social media as a viable disclosure channel for product recalls, with the goal of limiting and repairing damage to the firms' reputation.
Using a sample of 405 consumer product recalls between 2000 and 2012, researchers found that corporate social media, in general, lessens negative price reactions to product recall announcements. However, as social media evolved from less to more interactive channels, firms have lost complete control over the content appearing on their corporate social media, and the benefits of social media have lessened.

How C. Difficile Bacteria Wreak Havoc In Guts

How C. Difficile Bacteria Wreak Havoc In Guts

Sometimes, science means staying awake for two days straight.
But losing sleep is a small sacrifice to make, if you want to learn more about tiny bacteria that sicken half a million Americans each year, kill more than 14,000 of them, and rack up $4.8 billion in health care costs.
That's what drove a team of University of Michigan scientists to work around the clock to study the bacterium called Clostridium difficile, or C. difficile, the bane of hospitals and nursing homes. Most patients develop it after taking antibiotics.

Efficacy, Safety Of Statins Exaggerated, Finds Review

Efficacy, Safety Of Statins Exaggerated, Finds Review

Statins, cholesterol-lowering drugs prescribed to prevent heart attacks for the last two decades, are not as effective nor as safe as claimed, according to a review by Dr. David M. Diamond, a psychologist at the University of South Florida, and Dr. Uffe Ravnskov, an independent researcher.According to Diamond and Ravnskov, statins produce a dramatic reduction in cholesterol levels, but they have "failed to substantially improve cardiovascular outcomes." They further state that the many studies touting the efficacy of statins have not accounted for the adverse side effects of the drugs, but supporters of statins have used what the authors refer to as "statistical deception" to make inflated claims about their effectiveness. 

Voltage Tester For Beating Cardiac Cells

Voltage Tester For Beating Cardiac Cells

Electrical impulses play an important role in cells of the human body. For example, neurons use these impulses to transmit information along their branches and the body also uses them to control the contraction of muscles. The impulses are generated when special channel proteins open in the outer envelope of the cells, allowing charged molecules (ions) to enter or exit the cell. These proteins are referred to as ion channels.

Better Informed Women Less Likely To Want A Breast Mammogram

Better Informed Women Less Likely To Want A Breast Mammogram

Women who understand the risk of over-detection and over-diagnosis associated with mammography screening have lower intentions to have a breast screening test, according to a new study. Over-detection and over-diagnosis refers to the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer that would not have presented clinically during a woman's lifetime.
Such a diagnosis, and the resulting overtreatment, can harm women physically and emotionally.

New Bacterial Family May Become A Weapon In The Fight Against Malaria

New Bacterial Family May Become A Weapon In The Fight Against Malaria

A new family of bacteria that are common in malaria mosquitoes has been described by researchers at Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and Uppsala University in Sweden, Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, Germany, and the Veterinärmedizinische Universität, Austria. Now, attempts are made to use these bacteria in the fight against malaria.

New Therapeutic Strategy For Ovarian Cancer

New Therapeutic Strategy For Ovarian Cancer

Ovarian cancer is the deadliest of all cancers affecting the female reproductive system with very few effective treatments available. Prognosis is even worse among patients with certain subtypes of the disease. Now, researchers at The Wistar Institute have identified a new therapeutic target in a particularly aggressive form of ovarian cancer, paving the way for what could be the first effective targeted therapy of its kind for the disease.
The findings were published online by the journal Nature Medicine.

Menopause: Hot Flashes, Night Sweats Last For 7 Years In Many Women

Menopause: Hot Flashes, Night Sweats Last For 7 Years In Many Women

Frequent menopausal vasomotor symptoms (VMS), including hot flashes and night sweats, lasted for more than seven years during the transition to menopause for more than half of the women in a large study and African American women reported the longest total VMS duration, according to a new study.
VMS are the hallmark of the menopausal transition and they can affect the quality of women's lives. Up to 80 percent of women experience VMS during the transition to menopause and, despite the pervasiveness of these symptoms, robust estimates about how long VMS last are lacking.

What Antidepressants Do To Healthy People

What Antidepressants Do To Healthy People

Picture this: For the past two weeks you have felt continuously dejected. You have lost interest in what normally makes you happy. Perhaps you’ve slept poorly or lost your appetite. There is a risk that you have one of the most common maladies in the world: Depression.You decide to see a doctor. She considers different treatments and finally she gives you a prescription for a small box of antidepressants. Whether they will help you is unclear. Some patients report an effect after two or three weeks, others don’t notice any change at all. Some even get even more depressed.More depressed? If it is actually a healthy person who doesn't have clinical depression, it's certainly possible. 

Insight Into Inner Magnetic Layers

Insight Into Inner Magnetic Layers

Measurements at BESSY II have shown how spin filters forming within magnetic sandwiches influence tunnel magnetoresistance - results that can help in designing spintronic components. In doing so, the teams enhanced our understanding of processes that are important for future TMR data storage devices and other spintronic components.

Convective Initiation: Bigger Cities Are Affecting How Thunderstorms Occur

Convective Initiation: Bigger Cities Are Affecting How Thunderstorms Occur

A study that assessed the impact of urban land use on the initiation of thunderstorms from 1997 to 2013 in the humid subtropical region of the southeast United States found that isolated convective initiation events occur more often over the urban area of Atlanta compared with its surrounding rural counterparts.
The findings confirm that human-induced changes in land cover in tropical environments lead to more thunderstorm initiation events.

Nicotine Metabolite Amplifies Action Of The Primary Chemical Messenger For Learning And Memory

Nicotine Metabolite Amplifies Action Of The Primary Chemical Messenger For Learning And Memory

Nicotine's primary metabolite supports learning and memory by amplifying the action of a primary chemical messenger involved in both, researchers report.
"This is the first hint of what the mechanism of the metabolite cotinine might be," said Dr. Alvin V. Terry, Chairman of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University and corresponding author of the study in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.
While the findings show therapeutic promise for a metabolite once thought to be inactive, cotinine's benefits don't hold up across all learning and memory systems so Terry is already looking at analogues that would be even more broadly effective and equally safe.