Some men are Baptists, others Catholics; my father was an Oldsmobile man - Jean Shepherd, "A Christmas Story"

Do you have brand loyalty?   Some of it may be historical ideas of quality, to be sure - if you bought a Mercedes-Benz this decade it was likely because it used to be that you paid more for better quality - but some of it is just materialism - if you bought a Mercedes-Benz this decade you also discovered that marketing people figure that if you were dumb enough to pay double for basically Hyundai quality you will be dumb enough to pay $1000 for the CD player they didn't include - but you may have bought it anyway.

It turns out it may also be 'death anxiety', according to a new study published in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health have released findings identifying factors that affected evacuation from the World Trade Center (WTC) Towers after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. A research methodology known as participatory action research (PAR) was used to identify individual, organizational, and structural/environmental barriers to safe and rapid evacuation. 

The only thing that gets less respect than ethanol these days are batteries -  having to replace batteries in a Prius and the acid rain that comes from manufacturing them is why the Prius was always destined to just annoy everyone in the HOV lane and not actually help the enviroment.

Likewise, ethanol's mandates and subsidies seem to mean it will never get more efficient, but it currently creates more greenhouse gases in manufacturing and usage than it saves.   

People have found plenty to criticize in the last year but if we look at the last few decades, there is actually a lot more American equality - in overall happiness.   Which is really looking at the glass half full.

That's not to say there are more happy people - it's about the same as 1970 - but it instead means that the 'happiness' gap, the levels of discontent between unhappy and happy people, has become smaller.   The research published by University of Pennsylvania economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers in the Journal of Legal Studies says that the American population as a whole is no happier than it was three decades ago. But happiness inequality, the gap between the happy and the not-so-happy, has narrowed significantly.

A study published in Journal of the American Geriatrics Society suggests that the use of certain medications in elderly populations may be associated with cognitive decline. The study examined the effects of exposure to anticholinergic medications, a type of drug used to treat a variety of disorders that include respiratory and gastrointestinal problems, on over 500 relatively healthy men aged 65 years or older with high blood pressure. 

Children who talk on cell phones while crossing streets are at a higher risk for injuries or death in a pedestrian accident, said psychologists at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) in a new Pediatrics journal study. 

Cell phones are quickly becoming ubiquitous among American schoolchildren, according to the UAB psychologists; "Commercial interests actively market cell phones for children, and marketing research firms estimate that 54 percent of children 8-12 will have cell phones by the end of [this year,] double the 2006 rate." 

Just as drivers should limit cell phone use while driving, pedestrians, and especially child pedestrians, should avoid using cell phone while crossing streets, they state. 

A new study finds swimming, having a private well or septic system, and other factors not involving food consumption were major risk factors for bacterial intestinal infections not occurring in outbreaks. 

Outbreaks linked to food, such as the current Salmonella outbreak involving peanut butter that has sickened more than 500 people in 43 states, account for only about 10 percent of intestinal infections, which are medically termed as enteric infections, according to a new study in The Journal of Infectious Diseases.   The study suggests that methods for controlling bacterial enteric outbreaks may not be completely relevant to controlling the other 90 percent or so that occur sporadically.

CAMBRIDGE, England, January 26 /PRNewswire/ --

- Not Intended for Media in Austria, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, UK, France, Czech Republic and Switzerland

- First Analgesic Therapy to Combine Oxycodone, a Strong Opioid, With Naloxone, an Opioid Antagonist, Offers a New Treatment Option for Physicians

Mundipharma today announced that 13 countries* to date have received approval of Targin, a new combination therapy designed to control severe chronic pain whilst counteracting opioid-induced constipation, a common and often debilitating side effect associated with opioid treatment.[1],[2],[3] A period of European launches will now be initiated.

To view the Multimedia News Release, please click: http://www.prnewswire.com/mnr/targin/36704/

On January 25, 1945, 

It wasn't always the case that people believed in continental drift, German geologist and meteorologist Alfred Wegener's(1)  theory that parts of the Earth's crust slowly drift atop a liquid core.   He believed  200 million years ago there was once a gigantic supercontinent which he called Pangaea ("All-earth") which slowly moved apart.