Hospitals can greatly improve their flu vaccination rate among health care workers by forcing employees to get them, finds the Henry Ford Health System where they did just that.

Citing its own data, Henry Ford researchers say the health system achieved employee vaccination rates of 99 percent in the first two years of its mandatory policy, in which annual vaccination compliance is a condition of employment. Nationally, 63 percent of health care workers were immunized against the flu in the past two years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Wheat is the latest fad diet victim and a new study presented at the European Respiratory Society's International Congress adds to its villainy. It says flour is worse for occupational asthma in French workers than toxic chemicals.

The scholars analyzed all cases of occupational asthma in France to understand who was most affected by the condition and what the main causes were. Data were collected over a 3-year period from a network of respiratory doctors specialized in occupational diseases. 330 cases were analyzed.  

Blood may look like blood but it doesn't always behave like blood. 

The longer blood is stored, the less it can carry oxygen into the tiny microcapillaries of the body, says a new study that used optical techniques to measure the stiffness of the membrane surrounding red blood cells over time. They found that, even though the cells retain their shape and hemoglobin content, the membranes get stiffer, which steadily decreases the cells' functionality.

If you enjoy a sweet, fleshy peach today, give some thanks to scientifically minded, free-market farmers in China 7,500 years ago.

A new analysis has found that the domestic peaches popular worldwide today can trace their ancestry back to the lower Yangtze River Valley in Southern China at least that long ago.  Radiocarbon dating of ancient peach stones (pits) discovered in the Lower Yangtze River Valley indicates that the peach seems to have been diverged from its wild ancestors as early as 7,500 years ago. 

The Obama administration opened up a new front in the culture wars by creating a stunning social media campaign to get out the vote, and they have leveraged new media since; only one internal photographer gets to take pictures, for example, and those pictures go right to social media.

And they don't involve media organizations in reaching places like the Middle East and North Africa, they go right to Twitter.

A new blood test could allow doctors to predict which ovarian cancer patients will respond to particular types of treatment. The test could be developed and used in hospitals within the next few years.  

It would mean medics could see which patients could benefit from blood vessel-targeting drugs - such as bevacizumab - in addition to conventional therapy. Meanwhile, others who are not going to benefit would be spared the time and side effects associated with having the drug.  

The test would also help to reduce the cost to the NHS. Ovarian cancer has seen little increase in survival rates over the last few decades and scientists are seeking new treatment strategies to improve the standard approach of surgery and chemotherapy.