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The first major head-to-head study comparing the newer diabetes drug Avandia to the older medicines metformin and glyburide shows that Avandia provides better glucose control than metformin but carries more serious side effects and a higher cost, researchers said yesterday. "Metformin is still the first drug of choice" for newly diagnosed Type 2 diabetes, said the study's leader, Dr. Steven E. Kahn of the University of Washington and the Puget Sound Veterans Affairs Health Care System.

About 50 people gathered here Saturday to help the town forge its future and preserve its past.But the group wasn't working in the dark. Members used a 45-page concept plan, developed by graduate students at George Washington University in the District of Columbia after a three-month study of town problems and potential.New Windsor Citizens Action Project (NEWCAP), an area group that has been active on growth and environmental issues, used a $3,000 county grant to pay for the study, which focused on transportation and development.

Homeownership has become increasingly elusive for Anne Arundel County residents over the past decade because household incomes have failed to keep pace with housing costs, a new study has found.Since 1985, the median purchase price has risen 75 percent, from $82,932 to $145,241, while median household income has increased 50 percent, from $34,912 to $52,438.Those figures come from a report that Arundel Community Development Services Inc., a private, nonprofit organization, prepared for Anne Arundel.

Heavy viewers of the Fox News Channel are nearly four times as likely to hold demonstrably untrue positions about the war in Iraq as media consumers who rely on National Public Radio or the Public Broadcasting System, according to a study released this week by a research center affiliated with the University of Maryland's School of Public Affairs. "When evidence surfaces that a significant portion of the public has just got a hole in the picture ... this is a potential problem in the way democracy functions," says Clay Ramsay, research director for the Washington-based Program on International Policy Attitudes, which studies foreign-policy issues.

Johns Hopkins University researchers are studying the causes of death among workers in the nation's pulp and paper mills, the largest industrywide occupational mortality study ever undertaken in the United States.The seven-year study will track the health of about 100,000 former, current and future employees of 50 mills in 20 states.The American Paper Institute, a trade association that is paying for the $8.8 million study, announced the project last week.Dr. Genevieve M. Matanoski, an epidemiologist and occupational health physician at the School of Hygiene and Public Health who heads the study, said researchers will go back to 1974 to collect data and names of workers.

The debate on "California cars" and cleaner air in Maryland returns to the fast lane this week with the release of a study by a Johns Hopkins University professor.At the center of the long-running controversy is this question: Should smoggy East Coast states adopt the same strict limits on auto emissions that exist in California?The auto industry says no, and it wants Maryland and other states to accept slightly "dirtier" but less expensive vehicles than in California.Some environmentalists, however, say the industry proposal is an Edsel.

The Federal Reserve is expected to report in a study to be released next week that blacks and other minorities are denied mortgages far more frequently than whites with comparable incomes.While the Federal Reserve has not yet made public the data, one of its officials warned a meeting of the American Bankers Association last week that the study would show "dramatic disparities in loan-rejection rates."The Federal Reserve has tentatively scheduled a briefing for Oct. 21 to discuss the findings, including breakdowns of the study.

America's oft-maligned teen-agers are, in fact, tuned in to the nation's problems, eager to help solve them and ready to make sacrifices to assist their parents in surviving hard economic times.These are some of the findings of a new study on the family released today by the American Board of Family Practice, representing the nation's second-largest medical specialty. The study was commissioned, board officials said, to determine the impact of social and psychological factors on the health of America's families.

A study that will gauge how many buildable lots are available in Baltimore County will be released Wednesday as part of the fourth annual Maryland Conference on Growth, sponsored by the Home Builders Association of Maryland. The study, conducted by Towson University's Regional Economic Studies Institute, analyzed the inventory of buildable lots zoned for residential purposes in Baltimore County. Institute officials hope the study will be adopted as a benchmark for measuring the amount of buildable land needed to accommodate future growth in Maryland.

City drivers could pay 21 percent less for auto insurance if a non-profit company were created to serve Baltimore residents, according to findings from a new study prepared by consumer groups seeking to create the insurer.The much-awaited results, submitted to city officials last week, stem from a report commissioned to test the feasibility of an alternative insurer, which supporters see as a sure-fire method of cutting the highest auto premiums in Maryland. Baltimore residents pay nearly twice as much on average as residents statewide, according to an insurance industry trade group.