Year: 2014

While other studies have found ties between riding with impaired drivers and teen impaired driving risk, the new study surveyed about 2,500 U.S. students each year between 10th and 12th grades to examine rates over time – not at just one point. “We were interested in both driving while intoxicated and riding with an intoxicated driver, because it’s the combined of the two behaviors that reflects the true risk,” Bruce Simons-Morton, one of the researchers, told Reuters Health. “When you do that, you see a relatively high proportion – about 30 percent in our study – reported either driving while intoxicated or riding with an intoxicated driver within the last three years,” he said.

Jonathan Trott’s assertion that mental and physical fatigue had forced him home from England’s Ashes tour of Australia rather than depression felt like a “con” and would only convince his team mates he had abandoned them, according to former England captain Michael Vaughan. Team officials cited a long-standing “stress-related illness” as the cause. “I feel a little bit conned we were told Jonathan Trott’s problems in Australia were a stress-related illness he had suffered for years,” Vaughan wrote in his column in Monday’s Daily Telegraph newspaper. “He was obviously not in a great place but he was struggling for cricketing reasons and not mental, and there is a massive difference.” Vaughan added that depression was a debilitating illness and for Trott to use terms like “crazy” or “nutcase” in his interview only disrespected those who suffered from it.

Shares in Nikon Corp shed 4.2 percent to a five-week low of 1,686 yen on Monday morning after it was criticized by a Chinese consumer show that said the camera maker had sold defective products in China and denied local consumers fair treatment in after-sales service. Nikon, which had sales of 118 billion yen ($1.16 billion) in China in 2013, said on Sunday that it was taking the report "very seriously" and had moved to improve its after-sales network in China, according to its official microblogging sites.

Intercept Pharmaceuticals Inc said on Sunday its experimental liver disease drug was effective in a third late-stage clinical trial and that the results set the stage for the company to file for marketing approval. The drug, obeticholic acid (OCA), is designed to treat primary biliary cirrhosis, a disease in which bile ducts in the liver become damaged, allowing harmful substances to build up and scar liver tissue. The findings come roughly two months after a clinical trial of the drug in patients with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, a disease characterized by a buildup of fat in the liver, was halted early because the drug was working better than expected. The latest trial, known as POISE, indicates “that OCA clearly produced clinically meaningful improvements,” said Professor Frederik Nevens, chairman of the department of hepatology at the University of Leuven in Belgium and the lead investigator on the trial.

(The story is refiled to correct annual USDA slaughter figures in paragraph nine) By Meredith Davis and Christine Stebbins (Reuters) – Smithfield Foods Inc, the world’s largest pork processor, suspended hog slaughter at its Tar Heel, North Carolina, plant on Friday because of the spread of the deadly Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus (PEDv) which has tightened hog supplies, industry sources said. The Tar Heel plant, the company’s largest pork processing facility, reduced its slaughter schedule this week to four days from five days, said the sources, who have knowledge of the plant’s operations and hog purchases. Smithfield, acquired last year by China’s Shuanghui International, said it does not comment on daily operations, minor disruptions, and openings or closings of processing plants. Smithfield may also reduce operations at its plant in Clinton, North Carolina, the sources said.

By John Irish PARIS (Reuters) – French artificial heart maker Carmat will not carry out any more human transplants until it has determined the cause of the death of the first patient fitted with its device, one of the company’s co-founders said on Sunday. Carmat’s first patient, a 76-year-old man, died on March 2 in Paris, two and a half months after his operation. Before he was fitted with the device, the man was suffering from terminal heart failure, when the sick heart can no longer pump enough blood to sustain the body, and was said to have only a few weeks, or even days, to live. “Patients are still being chosen, but of course we will wait to hear a little more on the causes of the death of the first patient before transplanting another artificial heart,” Philippe Pouletty, director general of Truffle Capital, one of the main shareholders in Carmat told i Tele television.