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SALT LAKE CITY—Both corporate governance and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act work well in helping non-GAAP earnings reports toe the line, but opportunities for gaming the figures remain, a researcher with the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business has found.

The smaller the fork, the more you'll eat, a study says.

Over the course of two lunches and dinners at an Italian restaurant, researchers assigned diners to either "large fork" or "small fork" tables: The forks were either 20% larger or smaller than the standard fork.

The researchers weighed the plates before they went out to diners and when they came back. After controlling for factors such as lunch versus dinner, whether alcohol was consumed, and initial plate weight, people with small forks left less on their plates (4.4 ounces) than people with big forks (7.9 ounces).

Laura Leon remembers the day her father came home from the doctor's office and was told he was at high risk for diabetes. Her grandparents already have the condition and the risk for her is also high.

Leon and her mother, Olga Rubiano, teach health courses in Spanish for Alliance Community Services, a program sponsored by the Utah Health Department. The mother-daughter team tries to teach families how to adopt better eating and exercise habits. "The first step is to bring awareness in the community about the increasing obesity and other chronic disease rates," Rubiano said.

In an age where the next pandemic could leap continents in the hours it takes for an international flight to take off and land, University of Utah Professor Paul Hu fears the death toll may depend on how fast and efficiently world health officials can respond to an outbreak.

A small plate, it’s been shown, can help dieters with portion control. (Plate size, like portion size, has swollen significantly in America over the decades.) Now researchers say [pdf] that a large fork can have the same effect.

Wait? Isn’t that contradictory? Wouldn’t you look down at the food on a big fork and underestimate what you’re eating, and therefore eat more? Time’s Healthland blog quotes the section of the article where the authors deal with this paradox:

SALT LAKE CITY—The national health care reform act assumes patients will proactively take care of themselves to reduce their need for medical care. But making it happen will require a targeted social marketing strategy, according to a study led by a University of Utah marketing professor.

What’s in a name? To West Valley City’s promoters, it means everything when businesses list their base of operations as being within its borders.

Trouble is, because of branding considerations, many companies list Salt Lake City as their location instead, even when it is not.

It’s a discouraging trend to West Valley City Manager Wayne Pyle. He believes acknowledging West Valley City as a company’s headquarters shows outside businesses that Utah’s second-largest city is a good place to set up shop.

SALT LAKE CITY—(BUSINESS WIRE)—New research out of the University of Utah (the U) David Eccles School of Business shows social marketing tools are crucial to the success of health care providers in their efforts to help consumers navigate the new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA.)

The research paper led and co-authored by Marketing Professor Debra Scammon titled “Transforming Consumer Health” was published in the June issue of the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing.