Culture

p>Being conscious during an operation can make patients feel anxious and is often painful. However, new research from the University of Surrey has found that simple distraction techniques, such as talking to a nurse, watching a DVD or using stress balls, can help patients to relax during varicose vein surgery and reduce their pain.

The study, published today in the European Journal of Pain, analysed 398 patients, splitting them into four groups.

Studies of stress and its effects on health have typically focused on the worries of an individual: money, love, health, work. But what about stress shared by two people in a romantic relationship?

Put innovative farming techniques in the right hands. CGIAR Climate, CC BY-NC-SA

Craigslist's entry into a market results in a 15.9 percent increase in reported HIV cases, according to research from the University of Minnesota published in the December issue of MIS Quarterly. When mapped at the national level, more than 6,000 HIV cases annually and treatment costs estimated between $62 million and $65.3 million can be linked to the popular website.

If a hospital has the most advanced treatment or machine in the region, do you want to know about? The assumption is that the public is not going to be adequately served if they need to do studies of all local hospital before wanting to visit one. But people do research their illnesses. A national Pew Research Center survey indicated that 72 percent of adults searched the Internet for health information in the past year.

But, how reliable is that information and what are the ethical implications?

A study conducted by researchers at the UAB, the Catalan Institute of Health (ICS) and the FPCEE Blanquerna (Ramon Llull University), and which included the methodological support of the Institute for Primary Healthcare Research (IDIAP Jordi Gol), has analysed the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) by secondary school students, by using a sample of 5,538 students from the Vallès Occidental region of Catalonia. The study, based on surveys taken in the 2010/2011 academic year, finds links between school failure and an elevated use of computers at home.

More than three-fourths US neurosurgeons practice some form of defensive medicine--performing additional tests and procedures out of fear of malpractice lawsuits, reports a special article in the February issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.

No one likes to think of hospital patients like a factory assembly line but with more and more people competing for the same number of doctors, a lot of the patients entering the doors don't need "House" or to be tested for everything due to defensive medicine lawsuit defense policies.

In a recent study, 93 female undergraduate students were randomly assigned to one of three conditions regarding tweeting over a three day period. All participants received information over the three days regarding topical issues around sexism in politics, the media and in universities for them to tweet about. One group was required to tweet publicly, another privately and the third group did not tweet at all. They received no instructions regarding the number or the content of tweets they should undertake.

More than a third of children in England are overweight/obese, finds a 20 year study of electronic health records, published online in Archives of Disease in Childhood.

But the rapid rise in prevalence may be starting to level off--at least in younger children--the findings indicate, although there are no grounds for complacency, warn the researchers.

The 1 percent don't get enough respect, it seems. It is mostly attributed to being a cheat or lucky but luck alone will not do it - there is only a 1 in 9 chance that a typical American will join the wealthiest 1 percent for even one year in their whole working life and only an elite few get to stay in that economic stratosphere.

The analysis was conducted by Mark Rank, PhD, the Herbert S. Hadley Professor of Social Welfare at the Brown School at Washington University, and Tom Hirschl, PhD, professor of development sociology at Cornell.

"One implication is that female legislators might talk about politics and deliberately engage the other party more than their male colleagues," said Patrick Miller, a KU assistant professor of political science. "That might have some effects on the kind of legislative environment we have. Maybe if we have more women in office, you'd have more communication, less fighting, and perhaps more legislating and less gridlock."

The most comprehensive analysis to date of research on the effect of negative stereotypes on older people's abilities has concluded that these stereotypes create a significant problem for that demographic.

A research team at the University of Kent's School of Psychology carried out a review and meta-analysis of Aged-Based Stereotype Threat (ABST).

Imagine the following scenario: a woman and a man are having a conversation. She is interested in the conversation, and is friendly, smiling and warm. He interprets her behavior as sexual interest.

Or maybe: a man is sexually attracted to a woman he has just met, and signals this in various ways. She thinks that he is just being friendly.

Recognize these situations? If so, you're not alone.

We misunderstand each other

Older people are continuing to enjoy active sex lives well into their seventies and eighties, according to new research from The University of Manchester and NatCen Social Research.

More than half (54%) of men and almost a third (31%) of women over the age of 70 reported they were still sexually active, with a third of these men and women having frequent sex - meaning at least twice a month - according to data from the latest wave of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA).