WASHINGTON, April 7, 2010 -- "Rather than asking whether the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) does everything to improve access and lower costs, we should ask how it compares with the status quo," the American College of Physicians' (ACP) senior public policy adviser said in a paper published online today in Annals of Internal Medicine, the flagship journal of ACP. "By this measure, the PPACA is an extraordinary achievement."
Culture
After increasing during much of the 20th century, forest cover in the eastern United States in recent decades has resumed its previous decline, according to an exhaustive new analysis published in the April 2010 issue of BioScience. The work is described in an article by Mark A. Drummond and Thomas R. Loveland of the US Geological Survey (USGS).
The frequency of complex fusion procedures to treat spinal stenosis of the lower back increased between 2002-2007 among Medicare recipients, while the rates of decompression and simple fusion procedures decreased, according to a study in the April 7 issue of JAMA.
Higher rates of colorectal cancer incidence and mortality experienced by African-Americans may be driven largely by differences in health care utilization, and less by biology, according to a new study led by researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health.
In a study involving more than 60,000 people who were screened for colorectal cancer, researchers found that blacks and whites were equally likely to need a follow-up colonoscopy after a screening sigmoidoscopy, but blacks were less likely to actually receive the follow-up.
ST. LOUIS -- Vaccines likely would work better in protecting children from flu if they included both strains of influenza B instead of just one, Saint Louis University research has found.
"Adding a second influenza B virus strain to the seasonal influenza vaccine would take some of the guesswork out of strain selection and help improve the vaccine's ability to prevent influenza," said Robert Belshe, M.D., lead investigator and director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Saint Louis University.
CHICAGO – Rush University Medical Center is leading a nationwide Phase III clinical trial to determine whether a promising vaccine for advanced melanoma can effectively treat the deadly skin cancer.
An earlier Phase II trial of the experimental drug involving 50 patients with metastatic melanoma had stunning results. Eight patients recovered completely and four partially responded to the vaccine.
ANN ARBOR, Mich.---The proportion of older middle-aged Americans who report disabilities related to mobility increased significantly from 1997 to 2007, in contrast to the disability decline that has been found among Americans ages 65 and over, according to a new study by the RAND Corporation and the University of Michigan.
(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — African-American women have poorer survival rates than their white and Hispanic counterparts regardless of whether they receive radiation therapy following lumpectomy or mastectomy, UC Davis researchers have found.
Steve Martinez, assistant professor of surgery at UC Davis Cancer Center, determined that while Hispanic and African-American women with advanced breast cancer are less likely to receive radiation therapy than their white counterparts, only African Americans have poorer outcomes than white patients with the same stage disease.
A team of archaeologists from the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, along with a team of Syrian colleagues, is uncovering new clues about a prehistoric society that formed the foundation of urban life in the Middle East prior to invention of the wheel.
(Baltimore, MD) – Today, the Interactive Autism Network (IAN), www.ianproject.org, the nation's largest online autism research project, announces results of the Grandparents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders Survey, finding that nearly one-third of grandparents who participated were the first to raise concerns about their grandchild's development.
Thirty-one acres in extent, Tell Zeidan is situated where the Balikh River joins the Euphrates River in modern-day Syria. The location was at the crossroads of major trade routes across ancient Mesopotamia that followed the course of the Euphrates River valley.
Solomons, Md. (April 6, 2010) – New research by a team of ecologists and hydrologists shows that water temperatures are increasing in many streams and rivers throughout the United States. The research, published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, documents that 20 major U.S. streams and rivers – including such prominent rivers as the Colorado, Potomac, Delaware, and Hudson – have shown statistically significant long-term warming.
TORONTO, ON – The Information Warfare Monitor (Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and the SecDev Group, Ottawa) and the Shadowserver Foundation announce the release of Shadows in the Cloud: An investigation into cyber espionage 2.0.
The report documents a complex ecosystem of cyber espionage that systematically targeted and compromised computer systems in India, the Offices of the Dalai Lama, the United Nations, and several other countries.
The proportion of older middle-aged Americans who report disabilities related to mobility increased significantly from 1997 to 2007, in contrast to the disability decline that has been found among Americans ages 65 and over, according to a new study by the RAND Corporation and the University of Michigan.
The risk of dying from injuries is increasing for Americans ages 65 and older according to a new report from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Injury Research and Policy. The report found significant increases in death rates from falls (42 percent increase), machinery (46 percent increase), motorcycle crashes (145 percent increase) and unintentional poisoning (34 percent increase). The results are published in the February issue of Injury Prevention and are available online at the journal's website.